THE SOT- WEED FACTOR

ii

1 03 263

THE SOX-WEED FACTOR

by John Barth THE FI-OATINC OPFJRA

THE KKI> OF XJfcUE ROAJD THJ£ SOT-'WJeKO FACTOR

The SOT-WEED
FACTOR

BY JOHN EARTH

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

1960

All of the characters in this book

are fictitious, and any resemblance

to actual persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Kumber 60-0467

Copyright <g) i<)6o by John Barth

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States «*£ Aimnrica

£>esigrt; Charles Kaplan

CONTENTS

PART I: THE MOMENTOUS WAGER

i : The Poet Is Introduced, and Differentiated From His Fellows 13

2: The Remarkable Manner in Which Ebenezer Was Educated,
and the No Less Remarkable Results of That Education 15

3: Ebenezer Is Rescued, and Hears a Diverting Tale Involving
Isaac Newton and Other Notables 22

4: Ebenezer's First Sojourn in London, and the Issue of It 36

5: Ebenezer Commences His Second Sojourn in London, and
Fares Unspectacularly 51

6: The Momentous Wager Between Ebenezer and Ben Oliver,
and Its Uncommon Result 56

7: The Conversation Between Ebenezer and the Whore Joan
Toast, Including the Tale of the Great Tom Leech 62

8: A Colloquy Between Men of Principle, and What Came of It 72
9: Ebenezer's Audience With Lord Baltimore, and His In-
genious Proposal to That Gentleman 83

10: A Brief Relation of the Maryland Palatinate, Its Origins and
Struggles for Survival, as Told to Ebenezer by His Host 89

ii : Ebenezer Returns to His Companions, Finds Them Fewer
by One, Leaves Them Fewer by Another, and Reflects a Reflec-
tion 108

[6]

PART II: GOING TO MALDEN

i: The Laureate Acquires a Notebook 117

21 The Laureate Departs From London 128

3: The Laureate Learns the True Identity of Colonel Peter
Sayer 139

4: The Laureate Hears the Tale of Burlingame's Late Adventures 144
5: Burlingame's Tale Continued, Till Its Teller Falls Asleep 151

6: Burlingame's Tale Carried Yet Farther; the Laureate Reads
From The Privie Journdl of Sir Henry Burlingame and Discourses
on the Nature of Innocence 162

7: Burlingame's Tale Concluded; the Travelers Arrive at Plym-
outh ijj

8: The Laureate Indites a Quatrain and Fouls His Breeches 181

9: Further Sea-Poetry, Composed in the Stables of the King
o' the Seas X86

10: The Laureate Suffers Literary Criticism and Boards the
Poseidon jog

11 : Departure From Albion: the Laureate at Sea 209

12: The Laureate Discourses on Games of Chance and Debates
the Relative Gentility of Valets and Poets Laureate. Bertrand
Sets Forth the Anatomy of Sophistication and Demonstrates His
Thesis 224

13: The Laureate, Awash in a Sea of Difficulties, Resolves to Be
Laureate, Not Before Inditing Final Sea-Couplets 239

14: The Laureate Is Exposed to Two Assassinations of Character,
a Piracy, a Near-Deflowering, a Near-Mutiny, a Murder, and
an Appalling Colloquy Between Captains of the Sea, All Within
the Space of a Few Pages 255

15: The Rape of the Cyprian; Also, the Tale of Hicktopeake, King
of Accomack, and the Greatest Peril the Laureate Has Fallen Into
Thus Far

16: The Laureate and Bertrand, Left to Drown, Assume Their
Niches in the Heavenly Pantheon 286

17: The Laureate Meets the Anacostin King and Learns the True
Name of His Ocean Isle 301

18: The Laureate Pays His Fare to Cross a River 312

19: The Laureate Attends a Swine-Maiden's Tale 317

20: The Laureate Attends the Swine-Maiden Herself 327

21: The Laureate Yet Further Attends the Swine-Maiden 340

22: No Ground Is Gained Towards the Laureate's Ultimate
Objective, but Neither Is Any Lost 349

23: In His Efforts to Get to the Bottom of Things the Laureate
Comes Within Sight of Maiden, but So- Far From Arriving There,
Nearly Falls Into the Stars 359

24: The Travelers Hear About the Singular Martyrdom of Father
Joseph FitzMaurice, S.J.: a Tale Less Relevant in Appearance
Than It Will Prove in Fact 366

25: Further Passages From Captain John Smith's Secret Histo*
rie of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake: Dorchester Dis-
covered, and How the Captain First Set Foot Upon It 387

26: The Journey to Cambridge, and the Laureate's Conversation

by the Way 395

27: The Laureate Asserts That Justice Is Blind, and Armed With

This Principle, Settles a Litigation 407

28: If the Laureate Is Adam, Then Burlingame Is the Serpent 420

29: The Unhappy End of Mynheer Wilhelm Tick, As Related to
the Laureate by Mary Mungummory, the Traveling Whore o'
Dorset 427

30: Having Agreed That Naught Is in Men Save Perfidy, Though
Not Necessarily That Jus est id quod cliens fecit, the Laureate
at Last Lays Eyes on His Estate 447

31: The Laureate Attains Husbandhood at No Expense What-
ever of His Innocence 462

32: A Marylandiad Is Brought to Birth, but Its Deliverer Fares

as Badly as in Any Other Chapter 479

[8]

33: The Laureate Departs From His Estate 493

PART III: MALDEN EARNED

i: The Poet Encounters a Man With Naught to Lose, and
Requires Rescuing 5°7

2: A Layman's Pandect of Geminology Compended by Henry
Burlingame, Cosmophilist S1^

3: A Colloquy Between Ex-Laureates of Maryland, Relating
Duly the Trials of Miss Lucy Robotham and Concluding With an
Assertion Not Lightly Matched for Its Implausibility 529

4: The Poet Crosses Chesapeake Bay, but Not to His Intended
Port of Call 543

5: Confrontations and Absolutions in Limbo 556

6: His Future at Stake, the Poet Reflects on a Brace of Secular
Mysteries 575

7: How the Ahatchwhoops Doe Choose a King Over Them 586

8: The Fate of Father Joseph FitzMaurice, S.J., Is Further
Illuminated,, and Itself Illumines Mysteries More Tenebrous and
Pregnant 600

9: At Least One of the Pregnant Mysteries Is Brought to Bed,
With Full Measure of Travail, but Not as Yet Delivered to the
Light 611

10 : The Englishing of Billy Rumbly Is Related, Purely From
Hearsay, by the Traveling Whore o7 Dorset 622

11 : The Tale of Billy Rumbly Is Concluded by an Eye-Witness
to His Englishing. Mary Mungummory Poses the Question, Does
Essential Savagery Lurk Beneath the Skin of Civilization, or
Does Essential Civilization Lurk Beneath the Skin of Savagery?
—but Does Not Answer It 638

12: The Travelers Having Proceeded Northward to Church
Creek, McEvoy Out-Nobles a Nobleman, and the Poet Finds
Himself Knighted Willy-Nilly 650

13: His Majesty's Provincial Wind- and Water-Mill Commis-
sioners, With Separate Ends in View, Have Recourse on Separate
Occasions to Allegory 659

14: Oblivion Is Attained Twice by the Miller's Wife, Once by
the Miller Himself, and Not at All by the Poet, Who Likens Life
to a Shameless Playwright 671

15: In Pursuit of His Manifold Objectives the Poet Meets an
Unsavaged Savage Husband and an Unenglished English Wife 681

16: A Sweeping Generalization Is Proposed Regarding the
Conservation of Cultural Energy, and Demonstrated With the
Aid of Rhetoric and Inadvertence 696

17: Having Discovered One Unexpected Relative Already,, the
Poet Hears the Tale of the Invulnerable Castle and Acquires
Another 709

18: The Poet Wonders Whether the Course of Human History
Is a Progress, a Drama, a Retrogression, a Cycle, an Undulation,
a Vortex, a Right- or Left-Handed Spiral, a Mere Continuum, or
What Have You. Certain Evidence Is Brought Forward, but of an
Ambiguous and Inconclusive Nature 725

19: The Poet Awakens From His Dream of Hell to be Judged in

Life by Rhadamanthus 744

20: The Poet Commences His Day in Court 760

21: The Poet Earns His Estate 774

PART IV: THE AUTHOR APOLOGIZES TO HIS

READERS; THE LAUREATE COMPOSES HIS EPITAPH 791

PART I: THE MOMENTOUS WAGER

i: THE POET IS INTRODUCED, AND
DIFFERENTIATED FROM HIS FELLOWS

IN THE LAST YEARS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THERE WAS TO BE

found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy,
gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and
yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom
were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the
sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor
over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had
learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after
the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring
rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.

As poet, this Ebenezer was not better nor worse than his fellows, none
of whom left behind him anything nobler than his own posterity; but four
things marked him off from them. The first was his appearance: pale-haired
and pale-eyed, raw-boned and gaunt-cheeked, he stood— nay, angled— nine-
teen hands high. His clothes were good stuff well tailored, but they hung on
his frame like luffed sails on long spars. Heron of a man, lean-limbed and
long-billed, he walked and sat with loose-jointed poise; his every stance
was angular surprise, his each gesture half flail. Moreover there was a
discomposure about his face, as though his features got on ill together:
heron's beak, wolf-hound's forehead, pointed chin, lantern jaw, wash-blue
eyes, and bony blond brows had minds of their own, went their own ways,
and took up odd stances. They moved each independent of the rest and
fell into new configurations, which often as not had no relation to what one
took as his mood of the moment. And these configurations were shortlived,
for like restless mallards the features of his face no sooner were settled than
ha! they'd be flushed, and hi! how they'd flutter, every man for himself,
and no man could say what lay behind them.

The second was his age: whereas most of his accomplices were scarce
turned twenty, Ebenezer at the time of this chapter was more nearly

[ i A ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

thirty, yet not a whit more wise than they, and with six or seven years'
less excuse for sharing their folly.

The third was his origin: Ebenezer was born American, though he'd not
seen his birthplace since earliest childhood. His father, Andrew Cooke 2nd,
of the Parish of St. Giles in the Fields, County of Middlesex— a red-faced,
white-chopped, stout-winded old lecher with flinty eye and withered arm
—had spent his youth in Maryland as agent for a British manufacturer, as
had his father before him, and having a sharp eye for goods and a sharper
for men, had added to the Cooke estate by the time he was thirty some
one thousand acres of good wood and arable land on the Choptank River.
The point on which this land lay he called Cooke's Point, and the small
manor-house he built there, Maiden. He married late in life and con-
ceived twin children, Ebenezer and his sister Anna, whose mother (as if
such an inordinate casting had cracked the mold) died bearing them.
When the twins were but four Andrew returned to England, leaving Maiden
in the hands of an overseer, and thenceforth employed himself as a
merchant, sending his own factors to the plantations. His affairs prospered,
and the children were well provided for.

The fourth thing that distinguished Ebenezer from his coffee-house
associates was his manner: though not one of them was blessed with more
talent than he needed, all of Ebenezer's friends put on great airs when
together, declaiming their verses, denigrating all the well-known poets of
their time (and any members of their own circle who happened to be not
not on hand), boasting of their amorous conquests and their prospects
for imminent success, and otherwise behaving in a manner such that, had
not every other table in the coffee-house sported a like ring of cox-
combs, they'd have made great nuisances of themselves. But Ebenezer
himself, though his appearance rendered inconspicuousness out of the
question, was bent to taciturnity and undemonstrativeness. He was
even chilly. Except for infrequent bursts of garrulity he rarely joined in
the talk, but seemed content for the most part simply to watch the other
birds preen their feathers. Some took this withdrawal as a sign of his
contempt, and so were either intimidated or angered by it, according to
the degree of their own self-confidence. Others took it for modesty; others
for shyness; others for artistic or philosophical detachment. Had it been in
fact symptom of any one of these, there would be no tale to tell; in truth,
however, this manner of our poet's grew out of something much more
complicated, which well warrants recounting his childhood, his adventures,
and his ultimate demise.

2: THE REMARKABLE MANNER IN WHICH
EBENEZER WAS EDUCATED, AND THE NO LESS
REMARKABLE RESULTS OF THAT EDUCATION

EBENEZER AND ANNA HAD BEEN RAISED TOGETHER. THERE HAPPENING TO

be no other children on the estate in St. Giles, they grew up with no
playmates except each other, and hence became unusually close. They
always played the same games together and were educated in the same
subjects, since Andrew was wealthy enough to provide them with a tutor,
but not with separate tutoring. Until the age of ten they even shared the
same bedroom— not that space was lacking either in Andrew's London
house, on Plumtree Street, or in the later establishment at St. Giles, but
because Andrew's old housekeeper, Mrs. Twigg, who was for some years
their governess, had in the beginning been so taken with the fact of their
twinship that she'd made a point of keeping them together, and then
later, when their increased size and presumed awareness began to embarrass
her, they- had come so to enjoy each other's company that she was for a
time unable to resist their combined protests at any mention of separate
chambers. When the separation was finally effected, at Andrew's orders,
it was merely to adjoining rooms, between which the door was normally
left open to allow for conversation.

In the light of all this it is not surprising that even after puberty there was
little difference, aside from the physical manifestations of their sex, between
the two children. Both were lively, intelligent, and well-behaved. Anna was
the less timid of the two (though neither was especially adventuresome),
and even when Ebenezer naturally grew to be the taller and physically
stronger, Anna was still the quicker and better coordinated, and therefore
usually the winner in the games they played: shuttlecock, fives, or ptilk
maille; squails, Meg Merrilies, jackstraws, or shove ha'penny. Both were
avid readers, and loved the same books: among the classics, the Odyssey
and Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Boofe of Martyrs and the Lives of the
Saints; the romances of Valentine and Orson, Bevis of Hampton, and
Guy of Warwick; the tales of Robin Good-Fellow, Patient Grisel, and the
Foundlings in the Wood; and among the newer books, Janeway's Token
for Children, Batchiler's Virgins Pattern, and Fisher's Wise Virgin, as well

[ l6 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

as Cacoethes Leaden Legacy, The Young Mans Warning-Peece, The Booke
of Mery Kiddles, and, shortly after their publication, Pilgrims Progress
and Keach's War with the Devil. Perhaps had Andrew been less preoccupied
with his merchant-trading, or Mrs. Twigg with her religion, her gout,
and her authority over the other servants, Anna would have been kept to
her dolls and embroidery-hoops, and Ebenezer set to mastering the arts
of hunting and fencing. But they were seldom subjected to any direction
at all, and hence drew small distinction between activities proper for little
girls and those proper for little boys.

Their favorite recreation was play-acting. Indoors or out, hour after hour,
they played at pirates, soldiers, clerics, Indians, royalty, giants, martyrs, lords
and ladies, or any other creatures that took their fancy, inventing action
and dialogue as they played. Sometimes they would maintain the same role
for days, sometimes only for minutes. Ebenezer, especially, became ingen-
ious at disguising his assumed identity in the presence of adults, while still
revealing it clearly enough to Anna, to her great delight, by some
apparently innocent gesture or remark. They might spend an autumn
morning playing at Adam and Eve out in the orchard, for example,
and when at dinner their father forbade them to return there, on account
of the mud, Ebenezer would reply with a knowing nod, "Mud's not the
worst oft: I saw a snake as well." And little Anna,, when she ha8 got her
breath back, would declare, "It didn't frighten me, but Eben's forehead
hath been sweating ever since," and pass her brother the bread. At night,
both before and after their separation into two rooms, they would either
continue to make-believe (necessarily confining themselves to dialogue,,
which they found it easy to carry on in the dark) or else play word-games; of
these they had a great variety, ranging from the simple "How many words do
you know beginning with S?" or "How many words rhyme with faster?" to
the elaborate codes, reverse pronunciations, and home-made languages of
their later childhood, which, when spoken in Andrew's presence, set him
into a thundering rage.

In 1676, when they were ten, Andrew employed for them a new tutor
named Henry Burlingame III— a wiry, brown-eyed, swarthy youth in his
early twenties, energetic, intense, and not at all unhandsome. This
Burlingame had for reasons unexplained not completed his baccalaureate;
yet for the range and depth of his erudition and abilities he was little short
of an Aristotle. Andrew had found him in London unemployed and un-
dernourished, and, always a good businessman, was thus for a miserly fee
able to provide his children with a tutor who could sing the tenor in a

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ IJ ]

Gesualdo madrigal as easily as he dissected a field-mouse or conjugated dp.L
The twins took an immediate liking to him, and he in turn, after only a
few weeks, grew so attached to them that he was overjoyed when Andrew
permitted him, at no increase in salary, to convert the little summer-pavilion
on the grounds of the St. Giles estate into a combination laboratory and
living-quarters, and devote his entire attention to his charges.

He found both to be rapid learners, especially apt in natural philosophy,
literature, composition, and music; less so in languages, mathematics, and
history. He even taught them how to dance, though Ebenezer by age
twelve was already too ungainly to do it well and took small pleasure in
it. First he would teach Ebenezer to play the melody on the harpsichord;
then he would drill Anna in the steps, to Ebenezer's accompaniment,
until she mastered them; next he would take Ebenezer's place at the
instrument so that Anna could teach her brother the steps; and finally,
when the dance was learned, Ebenezer would help Anna master the tune on
the harpsichord. Aside from its obvious efficiency, this system was in keeping
with the second of Master Burlingame's three principles of pedagogy; to
wit, that one learns a thing best by teaching it. The first was that of the three
usual motives for learning things— necessity, ambition, and curiosity —
simple curiosity was the worthiest of development, it being the "purest"
(in that the value of what it drives us to learn is terminal rather than
instrumental) , the most conducive to exhaustive and continuing rather than
cursory or limited study, and the likeliest to render pleasant the labor of
learning. The third principle, closely related to the others, was that this
sport of teaching and learning should never become associated with
certain hours or particular places, lest student and teacher alike (and in
Burlingame's system they were very much alike) fall into the vulgar habit
of turning off their alertness,, as it were, except at those times and in those
places, and thus make by implication a pernicious distinction between
learning and other sorts of natural human behavior.

The twins' education, then, went on from morning till night. Burlin-
game joined readily in their play-acting, and had he dared ask leave would
have slept with them as well, to guide their word-games. If his system
lacked the discipline of John Locke's, who would have all students soak
their feet in cold water, it was a good deal more fun: Ebenezer and Anna
loved their teacher, and the three were inseparable companions. To
teach them history he directed their play-acting to historical events:
Ebenezer would be Little John, perhaps, and Anna Friar Tuck, or Anna
St. Ursula and Ebenezer the Fifty Thousand Virgins; to sustain their

[ l8 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

interest in geography he produced volumes of exotic pictures and tales of
adventure; to sharpen their logical equipment he ran them through Zeno's
paradoxes as one would ask riddles, and rehearsed them in Descartes's
skepticism as gaily as though the search for truth and value in the universe
were a game of Who's Got the Button. He taught them to wonder at
a leaf of thyme, a line of Palestrina, the configuration of Cassiopeia, the
scales of a pilchard, the sound of indefatigable, the elegance of a sorites.

The result of this education was that the twins grew quite enamored of
the world— especially Ebenezer, for Anna, from about her thirteenth
birthday, began to grow more demure and less demonstrative. But Ebenezer
could be moved to shivers by the swoop of a barn-swallow, to cries of
laughter at the lace of a cobweb or the roar of an organ's pedal-notes, and
to sudden tears by the wit of Volpone, the tension of a violin-box, or
the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem. By age eighteen he had reached
his full height and ungainliness; he was a nervous, clumsy youth who, though
by this time he far excelled his sister in imaginativeness, was much her
inferior in physical beauty, for though as twins they shared nearly identical
features, Nature saw fit, by subtle alterations, to turn Anna into a lovely
young woman and Ebenezer into a goggling scarecrow, just as a clever
author may, by the most delicate adjustments, make a ridiculous parody of
a beautiful style.

It is a pity that Burlingame could not accompany Ebenezer when, at
eighteen, the boy made ready to matriculate at Cambridge, for though a
good teacher will teach well regardless of the pedagogical theory he suffers
from, and though Burlingame's might seem to have been an unusually
attractive one, yet there is no perfect educational system, and it must be
admitted that at least partly because of his tutoring Ebenezer took quite
the same sort of pleasure in history as in Greek mythology and epic poetry,
and made little or no distinction between, say, the geography of the atlases
and that of fairy-stories. In short, because learning had been for him such
a pleasant game, he could not regard the facts of zoology or the Norman
Conquest, for example, with any genuine seriousness^ nor could he dis-
cipline himself to long labor at tedious tasks. Even his great imagination
and enthusiasm for the world were not unalloyed virtues when combined
with his gay irresolution, for though they led him to a great sense of the
arbitrariness of the particular real world, they did not endow him with a
corresponding realization of its finality. He very well knew, for instance,
that "France is shaped like a teapot," but he could scarcely accept the
fact that there was actually in existence at that instant such a place

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [19]

as France, where people were speaking French and eating snails whether
he thought about them or not, and that despite the virtual infinitude
of imaginable shapes, this France would have to go on resembling a
teapot forever. And again, though the whole business of Greece and Rome
was unquestionably delightful, he found the notion preposterous, almost
unthinkable, that this was the only way it happened: that made him
nervous and irritable, when he thought of it at all.

Perhaps with continued guidance from his tutor he could in time have
overcome these failings, but one morning in July of 1684 Andrew simply
announced at breakfast, "No need to go to the summer-house today,
Ebenezer. Thy lessons are done/'

Both children looked up in surprise.

"Do you mean, sir, that Henry will be leaving us?" Ebenezer asked.

"I do indeed," Andrew replied. "In fact, if I be not greatly in error he
hath already departed."

"But how is that? With never a fare-thee-well? He spoke not a word of
leaving us!"

"Gently, now," said Andrew. "Will ye weep for a mere schoolmaster?
'Twas this week or the next, was't not? Thou'rt done with him."

"Did you know aught oft?" Ebenezer demanded of Anna. She shook
her head and fled from the room. "You ordered him off, Father?" he asked
incredulously. "Why such suddenness?"

" 'Dslife!" cried Andrew. "At your age I'd sooner have drunk him good
riddance than raised such a bother! The fellow's work was done and I
sacked him, and there's an end on't! If he saw fit to leave at once 'tis his
affair. I must say 'twas a more manly thing than all this hue and cry!"

Ebenezer went at once to the summer-pavilion. Almost everything was
there exactly as it had been before: a half-dissected frog lay pinned out
upon its beech-board on the work-table; books and papers were spread open
on the writing-desk; even the teapot stood half-full on the grate. But
Burlingame was indeed gone. While Ebenezer was looking about in
disbelief Anna joined him, wiping her eyes.

"Dear Henry!" Ebenezer lamented, his own eyes brimming. " 'Tis like a
bolt from Heaven! Whatever shall we do without him?"

Anna made no reply, but ran to her brother and embraced him.

For this reason or another, then, when not long afterwards Ebenezer
bade good-bye to his father and Anna and established himself in Magdalene
College, at Cambridge, he proved a poor student. He would go to fetch
Newton's lectures De Motu Corporum from the library, and would

[20] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

spend four hours reading Esquemeling's History of the Buccaneers instead,
or some Latin bestiary. He took part in few pranks or sports, made few
friends, and went virtually unnoticed by his professors.

It was during his second year of study that,, though he did not realize
it at the time, he was sore bit by the muse's gadfly. Certainly he did not
at the time think of himself as a poet, but it got so that after hearing his
teachers argue subtly and at length against, say, philosophical materialism,
he would leave the lecture-hall with no more in his notebook than:

Old Plato sow both Mind and Matter;
Thomas Hobbes, naught but the latter.
Now poor Tom's Soul doth fry in Hell:
Shrugs GOD, " Tis immaterial:'

or:

Source of Virtue, Truth, and All is
Each Man's Lumen Naturalis.

As might be expected, the more this divine affliction got hold of him,
the more his studies suffered. The sum of history became in his head no
more than the stuff of metaphors. Of the philosophers of his era— Bacon,
Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke— he learned little; of its
scientists— Kepler, Galileo, Newton— less; of its theologians— Lord Her-
bert, Cudworth, More, Smith, Glanvill— nothing. But Paradise Lost he
knew inside out; Hudibras upside down. At the end of the third year, to his
great distress, he failed a number of examinations and had to face the
prospect of leaving the University. Yet what to do? He could not bear the
thought of returning to St. Giles and telling his f ormidable father, he would
have to absent himself quietly, disappear from sight, and seek his fortune
in the world at large. But in what manner?

Here, in his difficulty with this question, the profoundest effects of
Burlingame's amiable pedagogy become discernible: Ebenezefs imagina-
tion was excited by every person he met either in or out of books who could
do with skill and understanding anything whatever; he was moved to ready
admiration by expert falconers, scholars, masons, chimneysweeps, pros-
titutes, admirals, cutpurses, sailmakers, barmaids, apothecaries, and can-
noneers alike.

Aft, God, he wrote in a letter to Anna about this time, it were an easy
Matter to choose a Calling, had one all Time to live in! I should be fifty
Years a Barrister, fifty a Physician, fifty a Clergyman, -fifty a Soldier! Aye,
and fifty a Thief, and fifty a Judge! All Roads are fine Roads, beloved
Sister, none more than another, so that with one Life to spend lama Man

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 21 ]

bare-bumrrid at Taylors with Cash for but one pair of Breeches, or a
Scholar at Bookstalls with Money for a single Book: to choose ten were no
Trouble; to choose one, impossible! All Trades, all Crafts, all Professions are
wondrous, but none is finer than the rest together. I cannot choose, sweet
Anna: twixt Stools my Breech falleth to the Ground!

He was, that is to say, temperamentally disinclined to no career, and,
what is worse (as were this not predicament enough ) , he seemed consistently
no special sort of person: the variety of temperaments and characters that
he observed at Cambridge and in literature was as enchanting to him as the
variety of life-works, and as hard to choose from among. He admired
equally the sanguine, the phlegmatic, the choleric, the melancholic, the
splenetic, and the balanced man, the fool and the sage, the enthusiast and
the stick-in-the-mud, the talkative and the taciturn, and, most dilemmal of
all, the consistent and the inconsistent. Similarly, it seemed to him as fine
a thing to be fat as to be lean, to be short as tall, homely as handsome.
To complete his quandary— what is probably an effect of the foregoing—
Ebenezer could be persuaded, at least notionally, by any philosophy of the
world, even by any strongly held opinion, which was either poetically
conceived or attractively stated,, since he appeared to be emotionally
predisposed in favor of none. It was as pretty a notion to him that the
world was made of water, as Thales declared, as that it was air, i la
Anaximines, or fire, & la Heraclitus, or all three and dirt to boot, as swore
Empedocles; that all was matter, as Hobbes maintained, or that all was
mind, as some of Locke's followers were avowing, seemed equally likely to
our poet, and as for ethics, could he have been all three and not just one
he'd have enjoyed dying once a saint, once a frightful sinner, and once
lukewarm between the two.

The man (in short), thanks both to Burlingame and to his natural pro-
clivities, was dizzy with the beauty of the possible; dazzled, he threw up
his hands at choice, and like ungainly flotsam rode half-content the tide of
chance. Though the term was done he stayed on at Cambridge. For a week
he simply languished in his rooms, reading distractedly and smoking pipe
after pipe of tobacco, to which he'd become addicted. At length reading
became impossible; smoking too great a bother: he prowled restlessly about
the room. His head always felt about to ache, but never began to.

Finally one day he did not deign even to dress himself or eat, but sat
immobile in the window seat in his nightshirt and stared at the activity in
the street below, unable to choose a motion at all even when, some hours
later, his untutored bladder suggested one.

<*§ ?: EBENEZER IS RESCUED, AND HEARS A DIVERTING
TALE INVOLVING ISAAC NEWTON AND OTHER
NOTABLES

LUCKILY FOR HIM (ELSE HE MIGHT HAVE MOSSED OVER WHERE HE SAl),

Ebenezer was roused from his remarkable trance shortly after dinnertime
by a sudden great commotion at his door.

"Eben! Eben! Prithee admit me quicldy!"

"Who is it?" called Ebenezer, and jumped up in alarm: he had no friends
at the College who might be calling on him,

"Open and see," the visitor laughed. "Only hurry, I beg of thee!"

"Do but wait a minute. I must dress."

"What? Not dressed? 'Swounds, what an idle fellow! No matter, boy;
let me in at once!"

Ebenezer recognized the voice, which he'd not heard for three years.
"Henry!" he cried, and threw open the door.

"Tis no other," laughed Burlingame, giving him a squeeze. "Marry,
what a lout thou'rt grown to! A good six feet! And abed at this hour!" He
felt the young man's forehead. "Yet you've no fever. What ails thee, lad?

Ah well, no matter. One moment " He ran to the window and peered

cautiously below. "Ah, there's the rascal! Hither, Eben!"

Ebenezer hurried to the window. "Whatever is't?"

"Yonder, yonder!" Burlingame pointed up the street. "Coming by the
little dram-shop! Know you that gentleman with the hickory-stick?"

Ebenezer saw a long-faced man of middle age, gowned as a don, making
his way down the street.

"Nay, 'tis no Magdalene Fellow. The face is strange/'

"Shame on thee, then, and mark it well. 'Tis Isa^c himself, from
Trinity."

"Newton!" Ebenezer looked with sharper interest. "I've not seen him
before, but word hath it the Royal Society is bringing out a book of his
within the month that will explain the workings of the entire universe!
Ffaith, I thank you for your haste! But did I hear you call him rased?"

Burlingame laughed again, "You mistake the reason for my haste, Eben.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [23]

I pray God my face hath altered these fifteen years, for I'm certain Brother
Isaac caught sight of me ere I reached your entryway."

"Is7t possible you know him?" asked Ebenezer, much impressed.

"Know him? I was once near raped by him. Stay!" He drew back from
the window. "Keep an eye on him, and tell me how I might escape should
he turn in at your door."

"No difficulty: the door of this chamber lets onto an open stairway in
the rear. What in Heav'n's afoot, Henry?"

"Don't be alarmed/' Burlingame said. " Tis a pretty story, and I'll tell
it all presently. Is he coming?"

"One moment— he's just across from us. There. Nay, wait now— he is
saluting another don. Old Bagley, the Latinist. There, now, he's moving on."

Burlingame came to the window, and the two of them watched the great
man continue up the street.

"Not another moment, Henry," Ebenezer declared. "Tell me at once
what mystery is behind this hide-and-seek, and behind thy cruel haste to
leave us three years past, or watch me perish of curiosity!"

"Aye and I shall," Burlingame replied, "directly you dress yourself, lead
us to food and drink, and give full account of yourself. 'Tis not I alone
who have excuses to find."

"How! Then you know of my failure?"

"Aye, and came to see what's what, and perchance to birch some sense
into you."

"But how can that be? I told none but Anna."

"Stay, you'll hear all, I swear't. But not a word till I've a spread of
sack and mutton. Let not excitement twist thy values, lad— come on with
you!"

"Ah, bless you, thou'rt an Iliad Greek, Henry," Ebenezer said, and
commenced dressing.

They went to an inn nearby, where over small beer after dinner
Ebenezer explained, as best he could, his failure at the College and
subsequent indecisions. "The heart oft seems to be," he concluded, "that
in no matter of import can I make up by mind. The moment I grow sensible
that I must choose, I see such virtues in each alternative that none outshines
the rest. Marry, Henry, how I've needed thy counsell What agonies you
might have saved me!"

"Nay," Burlingame protested. "You well know I love you, Eben, and
feel your afflictions as my own. But advice, I swear't, is the wrong medicine
for your malady, for two reasons: first, the logic of the problem is such

[24] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

that at some remove or other you'd have still to choose, inasmuch as should
I counsel you to come with me to London, you yet must choose whether to
follow my counsel; and should I farther counsel you to follow my first
counsel, you must yet choose to follow my second— the regress is infinite
and goes nowhere. Second, e'en could you choose to follow my counsel,
'tis no cure at all, but a mere crutch to lean upon. The object is to put you
on your feet, not to take you off them. Tis a serious affair, Eben; it troubles
me. What are your own sentiments about your failure?"

"I must own I have none/' Ebenezer said, "though I can fancy many/'

"And this indecision: how do you feel about yourself?"

"Marry, I know not! I suppose I'm merely curious."

Burlingame frowned and called for a pipe of tobacco from a wine-
drawer working near at hand. "You were indeed the picture of apathy
when I found you. Doth it not gall or grieve you to lose the baccalaureate,
when you'd approached so near it?"

"In a manner, I suppose," Ebenezer smiled. "And yet the man I most
respect hath got on without it, hath he not?"

Burlingame laughed. "My dear fellow, I see 'tis time I told you many
things. Will it comfort you to learn that I, too, suffer from your disease, and
have since childhood?"

"Nay, that cannot be," Ebenezer said. "Ne'er have I seen thee falter,
Henry: thou'rt the very antithesis of indecision! Tis to you I look in envy,
and despair of e'er attaining such assurance."

"Let me be your hope, not your despair, for just as a mild siege of
smallpox, though it scar a man's face, leaves him safe forever from dying of
that ailment, so inconstancy, fickleness, a periodic shifting of enthusiasms,
though a vice, may preserve a man from crippling indecision."

"Fickleness, Henry?" Ebenezer asked in wonderment. "Is't fickleness
explains your leaving us?"

"Not in the sense you take it," Burlingame said. He fetched out a shilling
and called for two more tankards of beer. "I say, did you know I was an
orphan child?"

"Why, yes," Ebenezer said, surprised. "Now you mention it, I believe I

did though I can't recall your ever telling us. Haply we just assumed it.

taith Henry, all the years we've known you, and yet in sooth we know

naught of you, do we? I've no idea when you were bom, or where reared,

or by whom."

"Or why I left ycm «, discourteously, or how I learned of your
failure, or why I fled the great Mister Newton," Burlingame added. "Very

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

well then, take a draught with me, and I shall uncloak the mystery- There's
a good fellow!"

They drank deeply, and Burlingame began his story.

"I've not the faintest notion where I was born, or even when— though it
must have been about 1654. Much less do I know what woman bore me,
or what man got me on her. I was raised by a Bristol sea-captain and his
wife, who were childless, and 'tis my suspicion I was born in either America
or the West Indies, for my earliest memories are of an ocean passage when
I was no more than three years old. Their name was Salmon— Avery and
Melissa Salmon."

"I am astonished!" Ebenezer declared. "I ne'er dreamed aught so
extraordinary of your beginnings! How came you to be called Burlingame,
then?"

Burlingame sighed. "Ah, Eben, just as till now you've been incurious
about my origin, so till too late was I. Burlingame I've been since earliest
memory, and, as is the way of children, it ne'er occurred to me to wonder at
it, albeit to this day I've met no other of that surname."

"It must be that whomever Captain Salmon received you from was your
parent!" Ebenezer said. "Or haply 'twas some kin of yours, that knew your
name."

"Dear Eben, think you I've not racked myself upon that chance? Think
you I'd not forfeit a hand for five minutes' converse with my poor
Captain, or gentle Melissa? But I must put by my curiosity till Judgment
Day, for they both are in their graves."

"Unlucky fellow!"

"All through my childhood," Burlingame went on, " 'twas my single aim
to go to sea, like Captain Salmon. Boats were my only toys; sailors my only
playmates. On my thirteenth birthday I shipped as messboy on the
Captain's vessel, a West Indiaman, and so taken was I by the mariner's life
that I threw my heart and soul into my apprenticeship. Ere we raised
Barbados I was scrambling aloft with the best of 'em, to take in a stuns'l or
tar the standing rigging, and was as handy with a fid as any Jack aboard.
Eben, Eben, what a life for a lad— e'en now it shivers me to think on't!
Brown as a coffee-bean I was, and agile as a monkey, and ere my voice had
left off changing, ere my parts were fully haired— at an age when most boys
have still the smell of the womb on 'em, and dream of traveling to the
neighboring shire— I had dived for sheepswool sponges on the Great
Bahaman Banks and fought with pirates in the Gulf of Paria. What's more,
after guarding my innocence in the fo'c'sle with a fishknife from a lecherous

[26] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

old Manxman who'd offered two pounds for't, I swam a mile through
shark-water from our mooring off Curasao to squander it one August night
with a mulatto girl upon the beach. She was scarce thirteen, Eben— half
Dutch, half Indian, lissome and trembly as an eight-month colt— but on
receipt of a little brass spyglass of mine, which she'd taken a great 'fancy
to in the village that morning, she fetched up her skirts with a laugh, and
I deflowered her under the sour-orange trees. I was not yet fifteen."

"Gramercy!"

"No man e'er loved his trade more than I," Burlingame continued, "nor
slaved at it more diligently; I was the apple of the Captain's eye, and would,
I think,, have risen fast through the ranks."

"Then out on't, Henry, how is't you claim my failing? For I see naught
in thy tale here but a staggering industry and singlemindedness, the half of
which Fd lose an ear to equal."

Burlingame smiled and drank off the last of his beer. "Inconstancy, dear
fellow, inconstancy. That same singlemindedness that raised me o'er the
other lads on the ship was the ruin of my nautical career."

"How can that be?"

"I made five voyages in all," Burlingame said. "On the fifth— the same
voyage on which I lost my virginity— we lay becalmed one day in the horse
latitudes off the Canary Islands, and quite by chance, looking about for
something wherewith to occupy myself, I happened on a copy of Motteux's
Don Quixote among a shipmate's effects; I spent the remainder of the
day with it, for though Mother Salmon had taught me to read and write,
'twas the first real storybook I'd read. I grew so entranced by the great
Manchegan and his faithful squire as to lose all track of time and was
rebuked by Captain Salmon for reporting late to the cook.

"From that day on I was no longer a seaman, but a student. I read every
book I could find aboard ship and in port— bartered my clothes, mortgaged
my pay for books, on any subject whatever, and reread them over and over
when no new ones could be found. All else went by the board; what work I
could be made to do I did distractedly, and in careless haste. I took to
hiding, in the rope-locker or the lazarette, where I could read for an hour
undisturbed ere I was found. Finally Captain Salmon could tolerate it no
more: he ordered the mate to confiscate every volume aboard, save only
the charts, the ship's log, and the navigational tables, and pitched 'em to
the sharks off Port-au-Prince; then he gave me such a hiding for my sins
that my poor bum tingled a fortnight after, and forbade me e'er to read a
printed page aboard his vessel. This so thwarted and aggrieved me, that at

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 2J ]

the next port (which happened to be Liverpool) I jumped ship and left
career and benefactor forever, with not a thank-ye nor a fare-thee-well for
the people who'd fed and clothed me since babyhood.

"I had no money at all, and for food only a great piece of hard cheese I'd
stolen from the ship's cook: therefore I very soon commenced to starve.
I took to standing on streetcorners and singing for my supper: I was a pretty
lad and knew many a song, and when I would sing What Thing is Love?
to the ladies, or A Pretty Duck There Was to the gentlemen, 'twas not
often they'd pass me by without a smile and tuppence. At length a band
of wandering gypsies, traveling down from Scotland to London, heard me
sing and invited me to join them, and so for the next year I worked and
lived with those curious people. They were tinkers, horse-traders, fortune-
tellers, basket-makers, dancers, troubadours, and thieves. I dressed in their
fashion, ate, drank, and slept with them, and they taught me all their
songs and tricks. Dear Eben! Had you seen me then, you'd ne'er have
doubted for an instant I was one of them!"

"I am speechless," Ebenezer declared. "Tis the grandest adventure I
have heard!"

"We worked our way slowly, with many digressions, from Liverpool
through Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, and Bedford, sleep-
ing in the wagons when it rained or out under the stars on fine nights. In
the troupe of thirty souls I was the only one who read and wrote, and so was
of great assistance to them in many ways. Once to their great delight I
read them tales out of Boccaccio— they all love to tell and hear stories—
and they were so surprised to learn that books contain such marvelous
pleasantries, a thing which erst they'd not suspected, that they began to
steal every book they could find for me: I seldom lacked reading that year!
It happened one day they turned up a primer, and I taught the lot of 'em
their letters, for which services they were unimaginably grateful. Despite
my being a 'gorgio' (by which name they call non-gypsies) they initiated
me into their most privy matters and expressed the greatest desire for me to
marry into their group and travel with them forever.

"But late in 1670 we arrived here in Cambridge,, having wandered down
from Bedford, The students and several of the dons took a great fancy
to us, and though they made too free with sundry of our women, they
treated us most cordially, even bringing us to their rooms to sing and play
for them. Thus were my eyes first opened to the world of learning and
scholarship, and I knew on the instant that my interlude with the gypsies
was done. I resolved to go no farther: I bid adieu to my companions and

[28] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

remained in Cambridge, determined to starve upon the street-corners rather
than leave this magnificent place."

"Marry, Henry!" Ebenezer said. "Thy courage brings me nigh to weep-
ing! What did you then?"

"Why, so soon as my belly commenced to rumble I stopped short where
I was (which happened to be over by Christ's College) and broke into
Flow My Tears, it being of all the songs I knew the most plaintive. And
when I had done with the last verse of it—

Hark! yon Shadows that in Darkness dwell,
Learn jo contemn Light.
Happy, happy they that in Hell
Feel not the World's Despite.

—when I had done, I say, there appeared at a nearby window a lean frown-
ing don, who enquired of me, 'What manner of Cainite was I, that I
counted them happy who must fry forever in the fires of Hell? And another,
who came to the window beside him, a fat wight, asked me, Did I not
know where I was? To which I answered, 'I know no more, good masters,
than that I am in Cambridge Town and like to. perish of my belly!' Then
the first don, who all unbeknownst to me was having a merry time at my
expense, told me I was in Christ's College, and that he and all his fellows
were powerful divines, and that for lesser blasphemies than mine they had
caused men to be broke upon the wheel. I was a mere sixteen then, and
not a little alarmed, for though I'd read enough scarce to credit their story,
yet I knew not but what they could work me some injury or other, e'en
were't something short of the wheel. Therefore I humbly craved their par-
don, and pled 'twas but an idle song, the words of which I scarce attended;
so that were there aught of blasphemy in't, 'twas not the singer should
be racked for't but the author, John Dowland, who being long since dead,
must needs already have had the sin rendered out of him in Satan's try-
works, and there's an end on't! At this methinks the merry dons had like
to laugh aloud, but they put on sterner faces yet and ordered me into their
chamber. There they farther chastised me, maintaining that while my first
offense had been grievous enough, in its diminution of the torments of
Hell, this'last remark of mine had on't the very smell of the stake. 'How
is that?' I asked them. 'Why,' the lean one cried, 'to hold as you do that
they who perpetuate another's sin, albeit witlessly, are themselves blameless,
is to deny the doctrine of Original Sin itself, for who are Eve and Adam
but the John Dowlands of us all, whose sinful song all humankind must

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 29 ]

sing willy-nilly and die for't?' 'What is more/ the fat don declared, 'in
denying the mystery of Original Sin you scorn as well the mystery of
Vicarious Atonement— for where's the sense of Salvation for them that
are not lost?'

" 'Nay, nay!' said I, and commenced to sniffling. 'Marry, masters, 'twas
but an idle observation! Prithee take no notice oft!'

"'An idle observation!' the first replied,, and laid hold of my arms.
'Swounds, boy! You scoff at the two cardinal mysteries of the Church,
which like twin pillars bear the entire edifice of Christendom; you as much
as call the Crucifixion a vulgar Mayfair show; and to top all you regard
such unspeakable blasphemies as idle observations! Tis a more horrendous
sin yet! Whence came thee here, anyhow?'

" 'From Bedford/ I replied, frightened near out of my wits, 'with a band
of gypsies/ On hearing this the dons feigned consternation, and declared
that every year at this time the gypsies passed through Cambridge for the
sole purpose, since they are heathen to a man, of working some hurt on
the divines. Only the year before, they said, one of my cohorts had sneaked
privily into the Trinity brew-house and poisoned a vat of beer, with the
result that three Senior Fellows, four Scholars, and a brace of idle Sizars
were done to death ere sundown. Then they asked me, What was my
design? And when I told them I had hoped to attach myself to one of
their number as a serving-boy,' the better to improve my mind, they made
out I was come to poison the lot of 'em. So saying, they stripped me naked
on the spot, despite my protestations of innocence, and on pretext of seek-
ing hidden phials of vitriol they poked and probed every inch of my person,
and pinched and tweaked me in alarming places. Nay, I must own they
laid lecherous hands upon me, and had soon done me a violence but that
their sport was interrupted by another don— an aging, saintlike gentleman,
clearly their superior— who bade them stand off and rebuked them for
molesting me. I flung myself at his feet, and, raising me up and looking
at me from top to toe, he enquired, What was the occasion of my being
disrobed? I replied, I had but sung a song to please these gentlemen,
the which they had called a blasphemy, and had then so diligently searched
me for phials of vitriol, that I looked to be costive the week through.

"The old don then commanded me to sing the song at once, that he
might judge of its blasphemy, and so I fetched up my guitar, which the
gypsies had taught me the use of, and as best I could (for I was weeping
and shivering with fright) I once again sang Flow My Tears. Throughout
the piece my savior smiled on me sweetly as an angel, and when I was

[30] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

done he spoke not a word about blasphemy, but kissed me upon the fore-
head, bade me dress, and after reproving again my tormentors, who were
mightily ashamed at being thus surprised in their evil prank, he commanded
me to go with him to his quarters. What's more, after interrogating me at
length concerning my origin and my plight, and expressing surprise and
pleasure at the extent of my reading, he then and there made me a member
of his household staff, to serve him personally, and allowed me free use of
his admirable library."

"I must know who this saintly fellow was," Ebenezer interrupted. "My
curiosity leaps its banks!"

Burlingame smiled and raised a finger. "I shall tell thee, Eben; but not
a word oft must you repeat, for reasons you'll see presently. Whatever his
failings, 'twas a noble turn he did me, and I'd not see his name besmirched
by any man."

"Never fear," Ebenezer assured him. "Twill be like whispering it to
thyself."

"Very well, then. I shall tell thee only that he was Platonist to the ears,
and hated Tom Hobbes as he hated the Devil, and was withal so fixed
on things of the spirit— on essential spissitude and indiscerptibility and
metaphysical extension and the like, which were as real to him as rocks
and cow-patties— that he scarce lived in this world at all And should these
be still not sufficient clues, know finally that he was at that time much
engrossed in a grand treatise Against the materialist philosophy, which
treatise he printed the following year under the title Enchiridion Meta-
physicum"

" 'Sheart!" Ebenezer whispered. "My dear friend, was't Henry More him-
self you sang for? I should think 'twould be thy boast, not an embarrass-
ment!"

"Stay, till I end my tale. 'Twas in sooth great More himself I lived with!
None knows more than I his noble character, and none is more a debtor
to his generosity. I was then perhaps seventeen: I tried in -every way I
knew to be a model of intelligence, good manners, and industry, and ere
long the old fellow would allow no other servant near him. He took great
pleasure in conversing with me, at first about my adventures at sea and
with the gypsies, but later on matters of philosophy and theology, with
which subjects I made special effort to acquaint myself. 'Twas plain he'd
conceived a great liking for me."

"Thou'rt a lucky wight, f faith!" Ebenezer sighed.

"Nay; only hear me out. As time went on he no longer addressed me as

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

'Dear Henry/ or 'My boy/ but rather 'My son/ and 'My dear'; and after
that 'Dearest thing/ and finally 'Thingums/ 'Precious laddikins/ and 'Gypsy
mine' in turn. In short, as I soon guessed, his affection for me was Athenian
as his philosophy— -dare I tell you he more than once caressed me, and
called me his little Alcibiades?"

"I am amazed!" said Ebenezer. "The scoundrel rescued you from the
other blackguards, merely to have you for his own unnatural lusts!"

"Oh la, 'twas not at all the same thing, Eben. The others were men in
their thirties, full to bursting (as my master himself put it) with the filth
and unclean tinctures of corporeity. More, on the other hand, was near
sixty, the gentlest of souls, and scarce realized himself, I daresay, the char-
acter of his passion: I had no fear of him at all. And here I must confess,
Eben, I did a shameful thing: so intent was I on entering the University,
that instead of leaving More's service as soon as tact would permit, I lost
no opportunity to encourage his shameful doting. I would perch on the
arm of his chair like an impudent lass and read over his shoulder, or cover
his eyes for a tease, or spring about the room like a monkey,, knowing he
admired my energy and grace. Most of all I sang and played on my guitar
for him: many's the night — I blush to tell it!— when I would let him come
upon me, as though by accident; I would laugh and blush, and then as if
to make a lark oft, take my guitar and sing FZoiv My Tears.

"Need I say the poor philosopher was simply ravished? His passion so
took governance o'er his other faculties, he grew so entirely enamored of
me, that upon my granting him certain trifling favors, which I knew he'd
long coveted but scarce hoped for, he spent nearly all his meager savings
to outfit me like the son of an earl, and enrolled me in Trinity College."

Here Burlingame lit another pipe, and sighed in remembrance.

"I was, I believe, uncommonly well-read for a boy my age. In the two
years with More I'd mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, read all of Plato,
Tully, Plotin, and divers other of the ancients, and at least perused most
of the standard works of natural philosophy. My benefactor made no secret
that he looked for me to become as notable a philosopher as Herbert of
Cherbury, John Smith, or himself— and who knows but what I might have
been, had things turned out happily? But alas, Eben, that same shame-
lessness by virtue of which I reached my goal proved my undoing. 'Twas
quite poetic."

"What happened, pray?"

"I was not strong in mathematics," Burlingame said, "and for that reason
I devoted much of my study to that subject, and spent as much time as

t 32 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

I could with mathematicians— especially with the brilliant young man who
but two years before, in 1669, had taken Barrow's place as Lucasian Pro-
fessor of Mathematics, and holds the office yet. . . ."

"Newton!"

"Aye, the wondrous Isaac! He was twenty-nine or thirty then, as I am
now, with a face like a pure-bred stallion's. He was thin and strong and
marvelous energetic, much given to moods; he had the arrogance that oft
goes with great gifts, but was in other ways quite shy, and seldom over-
bearing. He could be merciless with others' theories, yet was himself in-
ordinately sensitive to criticism. He was so diffident about his talents 'twas
with great reluctance he allowed aught of his discoveries to be printed;
yet so vain, the slightest suggestion that someone had antedated him would
drive him near mad with rage and jealousy. Impossible, splendid fellow!"

"Marry, he frightens me!" Ebenezer said.

"Now you must know that at that time More and Newton had no love
whatever for each other, and the cause of their enmity was the French
philosopher Renatus Descartes."

"Descartes? How can that be?"

"I know not how well you've heeded your tutors," Burlingame said; "you
might know that all these Platonical gentleman of Christ's and Emmanuel
Colleges are wont to sing the praises of Descartes, inasmuch as he makes
a great show of pottering about in mathematics and the motions of heavenly
bodies, like any Galileo, and yet unlike Tom Hobbes he affirms the real
existence of God and the soul, which pleases them no end. The more for
that the lot 'em are Protestants: this much-vaunted rejection of the learning
of his time, that Renatus brags of in his Discourse on Method: this search-
ing of his innards for his axioms— is't not the first principle of Protestant-
ism? Thus it is that Descartes' system is taught all over Cambridge, and
More, like the rest, praised and swore by him as by a latter-day saint. Tell
me, Eben: how is't, d'you think, that the planets are moved in their
courses?"

"Why," said Ebenezer, "'tis that the cosmos is filled with little particles
moving in vortices, each of which centers on a star; and 'tis the subtle push
and pull of these particles in our solar vortex that slides the planets along
their orbs— is't not?"

"So saith Descartes," Burlingame smiled. "And d'you haply recall what
is the nature of light?"

"If I have't right," replied Ebenezer, "'tis an aspect of the vortices—
of the press of inward and outward forces in 'em. The celestial fire is sent

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 33 ]

through space from the vortices by this pressure, which imparts a transitional
motion to little light globules "

"Which Renatus kindly hatched for that occasion," Burlingame inter-
rupted. "And what's more he allows his globules both a rectilinear and a
rotatory motion. If only the first occurs when the globules smite our retinae,
we see white light; if both, we see color. And as if this were not magical
enough— mirabile dictul— when the rotatory motion surpasseth the rectilin-
ear, we see blue; when the reverse, we see red; and when the twain are
equal, we see yellow. What fantastical drivel!"

"You mean 'tis not the truth? I must say, Henry, it sounds reasonable
to me. In sooth, there is a seed of poetry in it; it hath an elegance."

"Aye, it hath every virtue and but one small defect,, which is, that such
is not the case: the universe doth not operate in that wise. Marry, 'tis no
crime, methinks, to teach the man's skeptical philosophy or his analytical
geometry— both have much of merit in 'em. But his cosmology is purely
fanciful, his optics downright bizarre; and the first man to prove it is
Isaac Newton."

"Hence their enmity?" asked Ebenezer.

Burlingame nodded. "By the time Newton became Lucasian Professor
he had already spoilt Cartesian optics with his prism experiments— and
well do I recall them from his lectures!— and he was refuting the theory
of vortices by mathematics, though he hadn't as yet published his own
cosmical hypotheses. But his loathing for Descartes goes deeper yet: it hath
its origin in a difference betwixt their temperaments. Descartes, you know,
is a clever writer, and hath a sort of genius for illustration that lends force
to the wildest hypotheses. He is a great hand for twisting the cosmos
to fit his theory. Newton, on the other hand, is a patient and brilliant ex-
perimenter, with a sacred regard for the facts of nature. Then again, since
the lectures De Motu Corporum and his papers on the nature of light have
been available, the man always held up to him by his critics is Descartes.

"So, then, no love was lost 'twixt Newton and More; they had in fact
been quietly hostile to each other for some years. And when I became the
focus oft, their antagonism boiled over."

"You? But you were a simple student, were you not? Surely two such
giants ne'er would stoop to fight their battles with their students."

"Must I draw a picture, Eben?" Burlingame said. "I was out to learn
the nature of the universe from Newton, but knowing I was More's prot6g6,
he was cold and incommunicative with me. I employed every strategy I
knew to remove this barrier, and, alas, won more than I'd fought for-—

[ 34 ] 1™ SOT-WEED FACTOR

in plain English, Eben, Newton grew as enamored of me as had More,
with this difference only, that there was naught Platonical in his passion."

"I know not what to think!" cried Ebenezer.

"Nor did I," said Burlingame, "albeit one thing I knew well, which was
that save for the impersonal respect I bare the twain of 'em, I cared not
a fart for either. Tis a wise thing, Eben, not to confuse one affection with
another. Well, sir, as the months passed, each of my swains came to realize
the passions of the other, and both grew as jealous as Cervantes' Celoso
Extremeno. They carried on shamefully, and each threatened my ruination
in the University should I not give o'er the other. As for me, I paid no more
heed than necessary to either, but wallowed in the libraries of the colleges
like a dolphin in the surf. Twas job enough for me to remember to eat
and sleep, much less fulfill the million little obligations they thought I
owed 'em. Ffaith, a handsome pair!"

"Prithee, what was the end of it?"

Burlingame sighed. "I played the one against the other for above two
years, till at last Newton could endure it no longer. The Royal Society
had by this time published his experiments with prisms and reflecting
telescopes, and he was under fire from Robert Hooke, who had light theories
of his own; from the Dutchman Christian Huygens, who was committed
to the lens telescope; from the French monk Pardies; and from the Belgian
Linus. So disturbed was he by the conjunction of this criticism and his
jealousy, that in one and the same day he swore ne'er to publish another
of his discoveries, and confronted More in the latter's chambers with the
intent of challenging him to settle their rivalry for good and all by means
of a duel to the death!"

"Ah, what a loss to the world, whatever the issue oft!" observed Ebenezer.

"As't happened, no blood was let," Burlingame said: "the tale ends hap-
pily for them both, if not for the teller. After much discourse Newton
discovered that his rival's position was uncertain as his own, and that I
seemed equally indifferent to both-which conclusion, insofar as't touches
the particular matters they had in mind, is as sound as any in the Principia.
In addition More showed to Newton his Enchiridion Metaphysicum,
wherein he plainly expressed a growing disaffection for Descartes; and New-
ton assured More that albeit 'twas universal gravitation, and not angels
or vortices, that steered the planets in their orbits, there yet remained
employment enough for the Deity as a first cause to set the cosmic wheels
a-spin, e'en as old Renatus had declared. In fine> so far from dueling to
the death, they so convinced each other that at the end of some hours of

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 35 ]

colloquy— all of which I missed, being then engrossed in the library— they
fell to tearful embraces, and decided then and there to cut me off without
a penny, arrange my dismissal from the College, and move into the same
lodgings, where, so they declared, they would couple the splendors of the
physical world to the glories of the ideal, and listen ravished to the music
of the spheres! This last they never did in fact, but their connection endures
to this day, and from all I hear, More hath washed his hands entirely of
old Descartes, while Newton hath caught a foolish infatuation with theology,
and seeks to explain the Apocalypse by application of his laws of series
and fluxions. As for the first two of their resolves, they fulfilled 'em to the
letter— turned me out to starve, and so influenced all and sundry against
me that not a shilling could I beg, nor eat one meal on credit. 'Twas off
to London I went, with not a year 'twixt me and the baccalaureate. Thus
was it, in 1676, upon my advertising my desire for employment, that your
father found me; and playing fickle to the scholar's muse, I turned to you
and your dear sister all the zeal I'd erst reserved for my researches. Your
instruction became my First Good, my Primary Cause, which lent to all
else its form and order. And my fickleness is thorough and entire: not for
an instant have I regretted the way of my life, or thought wistfully of
Cambridge."

"Dear, dear Henry!" Ebenezer cried. "How thy tale moves me, and
shames me, that I let slip through idleness what you strove so hard in vain
to reach! Would God I had another chance!"

"Nay, Eben, thou'rt no scholar, I fear. You have perchance the school-
man's love of lore, but not the patience, not the address, not I fear that
certain nose for relevance, that grasp of the world, which sets apart the
thinker from the crank. There is a thing in you, a set of the grain as 'twere,
that would keep you ingenuous even if all the books in all the libraries
of Europe were distilled in your brain. Nay, let the baccalaureate go; I
came here not to exhort you to try again, or to chide you for failing, but
to take you with me to London for a time, until you see your way clearly.
'Twas Anna's idea, who loves you more than herself, and I think it wise."

"Precious Anna! How came she to know thy whereabouts?"

"There, now," laughed Burlingame, "that is another tale entirely, and
'twill do for another time. Come with me to London, and I'll tell it thee
in the carriage."

Ebenezer hesitated. " Tis a great step."

"'Tis a great world and a short life!" replied Burlingame. "A pox on
all steps but great ones!"

[ 36 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"I fear me what Father would say, did he hear oft."

"My dear fellow/' Burlingame said caustically, "we sit here on a blind
rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the
grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of
you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber,
or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent;
'tis gone careening into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our
bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men,
Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!"

"You lend me courage, Henry," Ebenezer said, rising from the table,
"Let us begone."

4: EBENEZER'S FIRST SOJOURN IN LONDON, AND
THE ISSUE OF IT

BURLINGAME SLEPT THAT NIGHT IN EBENEZERT$ ROOM, AND THE NEXT

day they left Cambridge for London by carriage.

"I think you've not yet told me," the young man said en route, "how
it is you left St. Giles so suddenly, and how Anna came to know your
whereabouts."

Burlingame sighed. "'Tis a simple mystery, if a sad one. The fact is,
Eben, your father fancies I have designs upon your sister."

"Nay! Incredible!"

"Ah, now, as for that, 'tis not so incredible; Anna is a sweet and clever
girl, and uncommon lovely."

^"Yet think of your ages!" Ebenezer said. "'Tis absurd of Father!"

"Think you 'tis absurd?" Burlingame asked, coloring slightly. "Thou'rt
a candid fellow."

"Ah, forgive me," Ebenezer laughed; "'twas a rude remark. Nay, 'tis
not Absurd at all: thou'rt but thirty-odd, and Anna twenty-one. I dare-
say 'tis that you were our teacher made me think of you as older."

"'Twere no absurd suspicion, methinks, that any man might look with
love on Anna," Burlingame declared, "and I did indeed love the both of
you for years, and love you yet; nor did I ever try to hide the fact. Tis not
that which distresses me; 'tis Andrew's notion that I had vicious designs

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 37 ]

on the girl. 'Sheart, if anything be improbable, 'tis that so marvelous a
qreature as Anna could look with favor on a penniless pedagogue!"

"Nay, Henry, I have oft heard her protest, that by comparison to you,
none of her acquaintances was worth the labor of being civil to."

"Anna said that?"

"Aye, in a letter not two months past."

"Ah well, whatever the case, Andrew took my regard for her as lewd
intent, and threatened me one afternoon that should I not begone ere
morning he'd shoot me like a dog and horsewhip dear Anna into the
bargain. I had no fear for myself, but not to risk bringing injury to her
I left at once, albeit it tore my heart to go."

Ebenezer sat amazed at this revelation. "How she wept that morning!
and yet neither she nor Father told me aught oft!"

"Nor must you speak of it to either," Burlingame warned, "for 'twould
but embarrass Anna, would it not? And anger Andrew afresh, for there's
no statute of limitations within a family. Think not you'll reason him out
of his notion: he is convinced of it."

"I suppose so," Ebenezer said doubtfully. "Then Anna has been in cor-
respondence with you since?"

"Not so regularly as I could wish. Egad, how I've yearned for news of
you! I took lodgings on Thames Street, between Billingsgate and the
Customs-House— far cry from the summer-pavilion at St. Giles, you'll see!
—and hired myself as tutor whenever I was able, in order to eat, though
I've had no pleasure in my students. For two years and more I was unable
to communicate with Anna, for fear your father would hear oft, but some
months ago I chanced to be engaged as a tutor in French to a Miss Bromly
from Plumtree Street, that remembered you and Anna as playmates ere
you removed to St. Giles. Through her I was able to tell Anna where I live,
and though I dare not write to her, she hath contrived on two or three
occasions to send me letters. Twas thus I learned the state of your affairs,
and I was but too pleased to act on her suggestion that I fetch you out
of Cambridge. She is a dear gidr Eben!"

"I long to see her again!" Ebenezer said.

"And I," said Burlingame, "for I esteem her as highly as thee, and 'tis
three years since I've seen her."

"Think you she might visit us in London?"

"Nay, I fear 'tis out of the question. Andrew would have none of it."

"Yet surely I cannot resign myself to never seeing her again! Can you,
Henry?"

[ 38 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Tis not my wont to look that far ahead," Burlingame said. "Let us
consider rather how you'll occupy yourself in London. You must not sit
idle, lest you slip again into languishment and stupor/7

"Alas," said Ebenezer, "I cannot decide on a life work; I have no long-
term goals toward which to labor."

"Then follow my example/' advised Burlingame, "and set as your long-
term goal the successful completion of all your short-term goals. Could one
wish a better?"

"Yet neither have I any short-term goal."

"Ah, but you will ere long, when your belly growls for dinner and your
money's gone."

"Unhappy day!" laughed Ebenezer. "I've no skill in any craft or trade
whatever. I cannot even play Flow My Tears on the guitar. I can do noth-
ing/'

"Then 'tis plain you'll be a teacher, like myself."

"'Sheart! Twould be the blind leading the blind!"

"Aye,* smiled Burlingame. "Who better grasps the trials of sightlessness
than he whose eyes are gone?"

"But what teach? I know something of many things, and enough of
naught."

"I'faith, then the field is open, and you may graze where you list."

"Teach a thing I know naught of?" exclaimed Ebenezer.

"And raise thy fee for't," replied Burlingame, "inasmuch as 'tis no chore
to teach what you know, but to teach what you know naught of requires a
certain application. Choose a thing you'd greatly like to learn, and straight-
way proclaim yourself professor oft."

Ebenezer shook his head. "Tis still impossible; I am curious about the
world in general, and ne'er could choose."

'Very well, then: I dub thee Professor of the Nature of the World,
and as such shall we advertise you. Whate'er your students wish to learn
oft, that will you teach them/'

^Thou'rt jesting, Henry!"

"Ift be a jest," replied Burlingame, "'tis a happy one, I swear, for just
so have I lined my belly these three years. B'm'faith, the things Fve taught!
The great thing is always to be teaching something to someone— a fig for
what or to whom. 'Tis no trick at all."

No matter what Ebenezer thought of this proposal, he had not the
wherewithal to reject it: immediately on arriving in London he moved into
Burlingame's chambers by the river and was established as a full partner.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 39 ]

A few days after that, Burlingame brought him his first customer— a lout of
a tailor from Crutched Friars who happily desired to be taught nothing
more intricate than his A B Cs— and for the next few months Ebenezer
earned his living as a pedagogue. He worked six or seven hours a day,
both in his rooms and at the homes of his students, and spent most of
his free time studying desperately for the following day's lessons. What
leisure he had he spent in the taverns and coffee-houses with a small circle
of Burlingame's acquaintances, mostly idle poets. Impressed by their ap-
parent confidence in their talent, he too endeavored on several occasions
to write poems, but abandoned the effort each time for want of anything
to write about.

At his insistence a devious correspondence was established with his sister
through Miss Bromly, Burlingame's pupil, and after two months Anna con-
trived to visit them in London, using as excuse the illness of a spinster
aunt, Andrew's sister, who lived near Leadenhall. The twins were, as may
be imagined, overjoyed to see each other again, for although conversation
did not come so readily since Ebenezer's departure from St. Giles three
years before, each still bore, abstractly at least, the greatest affection and
regard for the other. Burlingame, too, Anna expressed considerable but
properly decorous pleasure in seeing again. She had changed somewhat
since Ebenezer had seen her last: her brown hair had lost something of
its shine, and her face, while still fair, was leaner and less girlish than he
remembered it.

"My dear Anna!" he said for the fourth or fifth time. "How good it is
to hear your voice! Tell me, how did you leave Father? Is he well?"

Anna shook her head. "Well on the way to Bedlam,, I fear, or to driving
me there. Tis your disappearance, Eben; it angers and frightens him at
once. He knows not the cause oft, or whether to comb the realm for you
or disown you. A dozen times daily he demands of me whether I know
aught of your whereabouts, or else rails at me for keeping things from him.
He is grown hugely suspicious of me, and yet sometimes asks of you so
plaintively as to move my tears. He has aged much these past weeks, and
though he blows and blusters no less than before, his heart is not in it,
and it saps his strength."

"Ah, God, it pains me to hear that!"

"And me," said Burlingame, "for though old Andrew hath small love
for me, I wish him no ill."

"I do think," Anna said to Ebenezer, "that you should strive to es-
tablish yourself in some calling, and communicate with him directly you

[40] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

find a place; for despite the abuse he'll surely heap on you, 'twill ease his
soul to learn thou'rt well, and well established."

"And 'twould ease mine to ease his/' Ebenezer said.

"Marry, and yet 'tis your own life!" Burlingame cried impatiently. "Fil-
ial love be damned, it. galls me sore to see the pair of you o'erawed by the
pompous rascal!"

"Henry!" Anna chided.

"You must pardon me," Burlingame said; "I mean no harm by't. But
lookee, Anna, 'tis not alone Andrew's health that suffers. Thou'rt peaked
thyself, and wan, and I mark a sobering of your spirits. You too should
flee St. Giles for London, as your aunt's companion or the like."

"Am I wan and solemn?" Anna asked gently. "Haply 'tis mere age,, Henry:
one-and-twenty is no more a careless child. But prithee ask me not to leave
St. Giles; 'tis to ask Father's death."

"Or belike she hath a suitor there," Ebenezer said to Burlingame. "Is't
not so, Anna?" he teased. "Some rustic swain, perchance, that hath won
your heart? One-and-twenty is no child, but 'twere a passing good wife,
were't not? Say, Henry, see the girl blush! Methinks I've hit on't!"

" 'Twere a lucky bumpkin, b'm'faith," Burlingame remarked.

"Nay," said Anna, "twit me no more on't, Brother, I pray you."

She was so plainly overwrought that Ebenezer at once begged her
forgiveness for his tease.

Anna kissed his cheek. "How shall I marry, when the man I love best
hath the bad sense to be my brother? What say the books at Cambridge,
Eben? Was e'er a maid less lucky?"

"Nay, i'faith!" laughed Ebenezer. "You'll live and die a maiden ere
you find my like! Yet I commend my friend here to your attention, who
though something gone in years yet sings a creditable tenor, and is the
devil's own good fellow!"

As soon as he spoke it Ebenezer realized the tactlessness of his remark
in the light of what Burlingame had told him weeks before of Andrew's
suspicions; both men blushed at once, but Anna saved the situation by
kissing Burlingame lightly on the cheek as she had kissed her brother, and
saying easily, "'Twere no mean catch, if you speak truly. Doth he know
his letters?"

"What matter?" Burlingame asked, joining the raillery. "Whatever I lack,
this fellow here can teach me, or so he vaunts."

" 'Swounds, that reminds me," Ebenezer said, jumping up, "I must run
to Tower Hill this minute, to give young Farmsley his first recorder lesson!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 41 ]

He fetched an alto recorder from the mantelpiece. "Quickly, Henry, how
doth one blow the thing?"

"Nay, not quickly: slowly," Burlingame said. "'Twere a grievous error
to learn an art too fast. On no account must thy Farmsley blow a note
ere he's spent an hour fondling the instrument, holding it properly, taking
it apart and fitting it together. And never, never should the master show
off his own ability, lest the student grow discouraged at the distance he
must travel. I'll teach you the left-hand notes tonight, and you can play
Les Bouffons for him on the morrow/'

"Must you go?" Anna asked.

"Aye, or 'tis stale bread come Sunday,, for Henry hath no scholars of
his own this week. I shall trust you to his care till I return."

Anna remained a week in London, slipping away from her aunt's bed-
side as often as possible to visit Ebenezer and Burlingame. At the end of
that time, the aunt having recuperated sufficiently to manage for herself,
she announced her intention to return to St. Giles, and to Burlingame's
considerable surprise and distress, Ebenezer declared that he was going
with her— nor could any amount of expostulation change his mind.

" Tis no good," he would say, shaking his head. "I am not a teacher."

"Damn me," Burlingame cried, "if thou'rt not fleeing responsibility!"

"Nay. If I flee, I flee to it, not from it. Twas a coward's act to hide
from Father's wrath. I shall ask his pardon and do whate'er he requires
of me."

"A pox on his anger! 'Tis not responsibility to him I speak of at all,
but responsibility to thyself. Twere a noble act, on the face oft,- to beg
his pardon and take your birching like a man, but 'tis no more than an
excuse for dropping the reins of your own life. 'Sheart, 'tis a manlier matter
to set your goal and swallow the consequences!"

Ebenezer shook his head. "Put what face you will upon it, Henry, I
must go. Can a son stand by and watch his father fret to an early grave?"

"Think no ill oft, Henry," Anna pleaded.

"Surely you don't believe it a wise move also?" Burlingame asked in-
credulously.

"I cannot judge the wisdom oft," Anna replied, "but certain 'twere not
a wrong thing to do."

"Marry, I have done with the twain of you!" Burlingame cried. "Praise
Heav'n I know not my own father, if this be how they shackle one!"

"I pray Heav'n rather you may someday find him," Anna said calmly,

[42] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"or word of him, at least. A man's father is his link with the past: the
bond 'twixt him and the world he's born to."

"Then again I thank Heav'n I'm quit of mine/' said Burlingame. "It
leaves me free and unencumbered.7'

"It doth in sooth, Henry," Anna said with some emotion, "for better
or worse."

When the time came to leave, Ebenezer asked, "When shall we see you
again, Henry? I shall miss you painfully."

But Burlingame only shrugged and said, "Stay here now, if t pain you
so."

"I shall visit as often as I can."

"Nay, risk not your father's displeasure. Besides, I may be gone."

"Gone?" asked Anna, with mild alarm. "Gone whither, Henry?"

He shrugged again. "There's naught to keep me here. I care not a fig
for any of my pupils, save to pass the time till something else absorbs me."

After making their good-byes, which their friend's bitterness rendered
awkward,, Ebenezer and Anna hired a carriage to fetch them to St. Giles
in the Fields. The little journey, though uneventful, they both enjoyed,
for despite the fact that Anna was disturbed to the point of occasional
tears over Burlingame's attitude, and Ebenezer grew more anxious by
the mile at the prospect of confronting his father, the carriage-ride was
the twins' first opportunity in some time to converse privately and at
length. When finally they arrived at the Cooke estate they found to their
alarm that Andrew had taken to his bed three days before, at the direction
of his physician, and was being cared for by Mrs. Twigg, the housekeeper,
like an invalid.

"Dear God!" cried Anna. "And I in London all the while!"

" 'Tis no fault of yours, my dear," said Mrs. Twigg. "He told us not to
send for you. 'Twould do him good to see you, though, I'm certain."

"I shall go too," Ebenezer declared.

"Nay, not just yet," Anna said. "Let me see what state he's in, and how
'twill strike him. 'Twere best to prepare him for it, don't you think?"

Ebenezer agreed, somewhat reluctantly, for he feared his courage would
fail him should he postpone the move too long. That same day, however,
Andrew's physician paid a call to the estate, and after learning what the
situation was and assuring Ebenezer that his father was too weak to make
a scene, he took it upon himself to announce to Andrew, as tactfully as
possible, that his son had returned.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 43 ]

"He desires to see you at once/' the physician reported afterwards to
Ebenezer.

"Is he terribly wroth?" Ebenezer asked.

"I think not. Your sister's return raised his spirits, and I recalled to him
the story of the prodigal son."

Ebenezer went upstairs and into his father's bedchamber, a room he had
entered not more than thrice in his life. He found his father anything but
the figure he'd feared: lying wigless and thin in the bed, he looked nearer
seventy than fifty; his cheeks were hollow, his eyes pale; his hair was turning
white, his voice querulous. At the sight of him Ebenezer quite forgot a
small speech of apology he'd concocted; tears sprang to his eyes, and he knelt
beside the bed.

"Get up, son, get up," Andrew said with a sigh, ''and let me look at ye.
'Tis good to see ye again, I swear it."

"Is't possible thou'rt not enraged?" Ebenezer asked, speaking with
difficulty, "My conduct warrants it."

"Ffaith, Fve no longer the heart for't. Thou'rt my son in any case, and
my only son, and if I could wish a better, you too might wish a better
father. Tis no light matter to be a good one,"

"I owe you much explanation."

"Mark the debt canceled," Andrew said, "for I've not the strength for
that either. Tis the bad child's grace to repent, and the bad father's to
forgive, and there's an end on't. Stay, now, I've a deal to say to you and
small wind to say it in. In yonder table lies a paper I drafted only yesterday,
when the world looked somewhat darker than it doth today. Fetch it hither,
if t please ye."

Ebenezer did as he was instructed.

"Now," said his father, holding the paper away from Ebenezer's view,
"ere I show ye this, say truly: are ye quite ready to have done with flitting
hither and yon, and commence to carry a man's portion like a man? If not,
ye may put this back where ye fetched it."

"I shall do whate'er you wish, sir," Ebenezer said soberly.

"Marry, 'tis almost too much to hopel Mrs. Twigg has oft maintained
that English babies ne'er should take French tit, and lays as the root o'
your prodigality the pull and tug of French milk with English blood. Yet
I have e'er hoped, and hope still, that soon or late I'll see ye a man,, in sooth
an Ebenezer for our house."

"Beg pardon, sir! I must own I lose you in this talk of French milk and
Ebenezers. Surely my mother wasn't French?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Nay, nay, thou'rt English sired and English foaled, ye may be certain.
Damn that doctor, anyway! Fetch me a pipe and sit ye down, boy, and
I shall lay your history open to ye once for all, and the matter I'm most
concerned with."

"Is't not unwise to tire yourself?" Ebenezer inquired.

"La," Andrew scoffed, "by the same logic 'tis folly to live. Nay, I'll rest
soon enough in the grave." He raised himself a bit on the bed, accepted
a pipe from Ebenezer, and after sampling it with pleasure, commenced
his story:

" Twas in the summer of 1665," he said, "when I came to London from
Maryland to settle some business with the merchant Peter Paggen down
by Baynard's Castle, that I met and married Anne Bowyer of Bassing-
shawe, your mother. Twas a brief wooing, and to escape the great Plague
we sailed at once to Maryland on the brig Redoubt, cargoed with dry goods
and hardware. We ran into storms from the day we left the Lizard, and
headwinds from Flores to the Capes; fourteen weeks we spent a-crossing,
and when at last we stepped ashore at St. Mary's City in December, poor
Anne was already three months with childl Twas an unhappy circumstance,
for you must know that every newcomer to the plantations endures a period
of seasoning, some weeks of fitting to the clime, and hardier souls than
Anne have succumbed to't. She was a little woman, and delicate, fitter for
the sewing parlor than the 'tween decks: we'd been not a week at St. Mary's
ere a cold she'd got on shipboard turned to a frightful ague. I fetched her
o'er the Bay to Maiden at once, and the room I'd built for her bridal-
chamber became her sick-room—she languished there for the balance of
her term, weak and feverish."

Ebenezer listened with considerable emotion, but could think of nothing
to say. His father drew again on his pipe.

"My whole house," he continued, "and I as well, looked for Anne to
miscarry, or else deliver the child still-born, by reason of her health. None-
theless I took it upon myself to seek a wet nurse on the chance it might
live, for I knew well poor Anne could ne'er give suck. As't happened,
one day in February I chanced to be standing on the wharf where Cambridge
is now, bargaining with some planters, when I heard a great splash in the
Choptank behind me, and turned around in time to see a young lady's
head go under the ice."

"Mercy!"

"I was a passing good swimmer in those days, despite my arm, and as
no one else seemed inclined to take a cold bath I jumped in after her,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 45 ]

periwig and all, and held her up till the others fetched us out. But think
ye I got so much as a thankee for my pains? The wench was no sooner
herself again than she commenced to bewail her rescue and berate me for
not letting her drown. This surprised the lot of us no end, inasmuch
as she was a pretty young thing, not above sixteen or seventeen years old.

44 'How is't ye wish to end what you've scarce begun?' I asked her. 'Many's
the merry tale hath a bad beginning.'

" 'No matter the cause oft,' she replied. 'In sooth I've little to thank
ye for; in saving me from a short death by drowning, you but condemn
me to a long one by freezing, or a longer by starving/

"I was about to press her farther for the cause, but I chanced to observe
what I'd not remarked ere then— that though her face and arms were peaked
and thin, her belly was a-bloom for fair.

" 'Ah, I see't now,' I said. 'Belike your master had sent ye to feel of the
sot-weed, whether 'twas dry enough for casking, and some field-hand rogered
ye in the curing-house?'

"This I said by way of a tease, inasmuch as I guessed by her ragged dress
and grimy skin she was a servant girl. She made no answer, but shook her
head and wept e'en harder.

" Welladay, then,' I said to her, 'if not a field-hand, why, the master
himself, and if not the curing-house, then the linen closet or the cowshed.
Such a belly as thine is not got in church, I swear! And now the planter's
not stayed to lay by his harvest, I'll wager/

"After some farther enquiry the girl owned she had indeed been supping
ere the priest said grace, as young folks will; but only once, and this not
by force at the hands of a servingman, but rather at the entreaty of a
planter's son who'd sworn his love for her. Nor was't a mere silly milkmaid's
maidenhead he took, i'faith, for she was Roxanne Edouard, the orphan
of the great French gentleman Cecile Edouard of Edouardine, upriver from
Cooke's Point. She'd been reared since her parents' death by a wealthy
uncle in Church Creek, down-county, who was so concerned for her noble
blood that he permitted her no suitors from among the young men of
the place. Twas her bad luck to fall in love with the eldest son of her
uncle's neighbor, another planter, and he in turn was so taken with her
that he begged her to marry him. She was a dutiful enough child not to
wed a young man against the wishes of her guardian, but not so dutiful
that she didn't let him have first go at her anyhow, in the bilge of a piragua
out on the river. Afterwards she refused to see him farther, and the young
fool was so distressed as to give up his patrimony and go to sea a common

[46] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

sailor, ne'er to be heard from again. Anon she found herself with child,
and straightway confessed the whole matter to her uncle, who turned her
off the place at once/7

"How!" Ebenezer cried. "Tis a nice concern he bore her, indeed!
Heav'n protect a child from such solicitude! I cannot fathom it!"

"Nor I" said Andrew, "but thus it happened, or so I heard it. What's
more, he threatened violence to any who took her in, and so poor Roxanne
was soon brought to direst straits. She tried to indent herself as a domestic,
though 'twas little she knew of work; but masters had small inclination
for a servant who would herself need service ere many months passed. Every-
one knew her and her plight,, and many a man who'd been turned from
her uncle's door for paying her the merest cordiality before, made her the
filthiest proposals now she was down on her luck."

"'Sheart! Had the wretches no pity for her state?"

"Nay, e'en here her belly undid her, for so far from discouraging, it seemed
rather the more to enflame 'em, the plainer it showed. Have ye not your-
self observed " He glanced at his son. "Nay, no matter. In short, she

saw naught ahead save harlotry and disgrace on the one hand, or rape
and starvation on the other, and being ashamed of the former and afraid
of the latter, she chose a third in lieu of either, which was, to leap into the
Choptank."

"And, prithee, what did she after you saved her?" Ebenezer asked.

"Why, what else but strive with might and main to leap in again?" An-
drew replied. "At last it occurred to me to invite her to join my house,
since she looked to lighten but a week ere poor Anne; I agreed to keep
her well and provide for her confinement on condition she suckle our babe,
if it should live, with her own. She agreed, we drafted the indenture-papers,
and I fetched her back to Maiden.

"Now your mother, God rest her, grew worse all the time. She was a
wondrous Protestant, much giv'n to Bible-reading, and whene'er I showed
her pity she was wont to reply, Tear not, husband: the Lord will help us/ "

"Bless her!" said Ebenezer.

"'Twas her conceit," Andrew went on, "to regard her several infirm-
ities as an enemy host, and late and soon she was after me to read her from
the Old Testament of God's military intercessions in behalf of the
Israelites. Hence when her ague passed off without killing her (albeit it left
her pitifully weak), she was proud as any general who sees a flank of the
enemy turned, and she declared like the prophet Samuel upon the rout
of the Philistines, Thus far hath the Lord helped us!' At length her time

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [47]

arrived, and after frightful labor she brought forth Anna, eight pounds
and a half. She named her after her own mother, and said again to me,
'Thus far hath the good Lord helped us!' Not a soul then but thought
her trials were done, and even I, who was no Catholic saint nor Protestant
either, thanked God for her delivery. But not an hour after bearing Anna
her travail commenced again, and after much clamor and hollowing she
brought you to light, nigh as big as your sister. Seventeen pounds of child
she dropped in all, from a— well, from a frame so delicate, simple flatulence
gave her pain. 'Twas no wonder she passed into a coma ere your shoulders
cleared, and ne'er recovered from it! That same night she died, and the
weather being unseasonably hot for May, I fetched her down next day and
buried her 'neath a great loblolly pine tree on the Bay side of the point,
where she lies yet."

"God help me!" Ebenezer wept. "I am not worthy oft!"

"'Twould be dishonest not to own/' Andrew said, "that such exactly
were my sentiments at the time, God forgive me. E'en as the burial service
was read I could hear the twain of you a-squalling up in the house, and
when I placed a boulder atop the sandy grave, against the time our mason
could letter a headstone, it recalled to me those verses in the Book of
Samuel where God smites the Philistines and Samuel dedicates the token
of His aid— the stone the Hebrews called Ebenezer. Twas then, boy, in
bitterness and sacrilege, I gave ye that name: I baptized ye myself, ere
Roxanne could stay me, with the dregs of a flagon of perry, and declared
to the company of Maiden, 'Thus far hath the Lord helped us!' "

"Ah, dear Father, berate thyself no more for't," Ebenezer begged—
though Andrew had displayed no particular emotion. "I understand and
forgive!"

Andrew tapped out his pipe in a spittoon beside the bed and, after
resting a moment, resumed his story.

"In any case/' he said calmly, ''you and your sister ne'er wanted mothering.
The girl Roxanne had borne her own child, a daughter, eight days before,
but the babe had strangled ere its first cry with the navel-cord round its neck;
so that maugre the fact there were two of ye, instead of one, she had no
more mouths to feed than breasts to feed 'em with, and there was milk
aplenty for all. She was e'er a healthy wench once on her feed again—
ruddy-faced, full-breasted, and spirited as a dairymaid for all her fine blood.
For the four years of her indenture she raised ye as her own. Mrs. Twigg
declared no good could come of mixing French pap and English blood,
but ye grew fat and merry as any babes in Dorset.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"In 1670, the last year of Roxanne's service, I resolved to leave Maiden
for London. I was weary of factoring, for one thing; I saw no chance to im-
prove my tobacco-holdings, for another; and though Cooke's Point is of all
places on earth dearest to my heart, and my first and largest property, yet
'twas e'er a heartache to live a widower in the house Fd raised for my
bride. Moreover, I must own my position with regard to Roxanne had got
somewhat delicate since poor Anne's death. That she thought no ill o' me
I took for granted, for she was bound to me by gratitude as well as legal
instrument. I in turn was more than a little obliged to her, in that she'd
not only suckled twice as many of my children as she was legally bound
to, but done it with a mother's love, and had taken on most of Mrs, Twigg's
duties as governess as well, out of pure affection for ye. I've said already
she was an uncommon pretty piece, and I at that time was a strapping
wight of thirty-three, prosperous and it may be not unhandsome, who by
reason of poor Anne's affliction and death had perforce slept alone and
uncomf orted since my arrival in the province. Hence, 'tis not surprising
some small-minded busybodies should have it Roxanne was filling Anne's
place in the bedchamber as well as the nursery— more especially since they
themselves had lechered after her. Tis e'er the way of men, I've learned,
to credit others with the sins themselves want either the courage or the
means to commit."

"But marry, what vicious gossip!"

"Aye/' Andrew said, "but As -well be a sinner as known for one. What a
man is in the eyes of God means little to the world of men. All things
considered, I thought it well to release her; yet I could by no means send
her back to death or harlotry, and so 'twas a pleasant surprise when, one
day on that selfsame landing where I'd met her, I was approached by a
man who introduced himself as Roxanne's uncle, and asked most solicit-
ously after his niece."

"I pray the fellow had tempered his wrath by then."

"He had," Andrew said, "to the point where the very thought of his
former unkindness started him to tears, and when I told him of Roxanne's
subsequent straits and of the death of her infant, he near tore his hair in
remorse. There was no end to his expressions of gratitude for my having
saved and cared for her; he declared himself eager to make amends for his
severity, and entreated me to prevail upon Roxanne to return to his house.
I reminded him that it was his unreasonableness in the matter of suitors
for his niece that had driven her to her former disgrace, and he replied
that so far from persisting in that unreasonableness, he had in mind at

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [49]

that very moment an excellent match for her with a wealthy fellow of
the neighborhood, who had e'er looked kindly upon her.

"You can imagine Roxanne's surprise when she learned of all this. She
was pleased to hear of her uncle's change of heart, and yet 'twas like giving
up two of her own to let you and Anna go. She wept and wailed, as women
will at any great change in their circumstances, and pleaded with me to
take her to London, but it seemed to me 'twould be a disservice to the
twain of us to maintain any longer our connection, more especially since
her uncle had a substantial match arranged for her. Thus was it that on
the same day when I gave Roxanne my half of her indenture-bond, sig-
nifying the end of her service, her uncle drove out to Maiden in a buck-
board and fetched her away, and that was that. Not a fortnight later I too
made my last farewells to Maiden, and to the grave of your mother, and
left Maryland forever. Think not 'twas an easy matter to go: 'tis a rarity
indeed when Life presents ye with a clean choice, i'faith! Tis more her wont
to arrange things in such fashion that de'il the course ye choose, 'twill give
ye pain. Eheu! Fve rambled and digressed till I'm near out of wind! Here
now/' he said, handing Ebenezer the document he'd been toying and
gesturing with throughout his narration. "Read this whilst I catch my
breath."

Ebenezer took the paper, curious and uneasy, and read, among other
things:

Andrew Cooke of the parish of St. Giles in the Fields in the County of Middle-
sex, Gentleman doe make this my last will and Testament as followeth ... In*
primus I give to my Son Ebenezer Cooke and Anna Cooke my daughter all my
Right and Title of and to ... all my Land called Cookes Poynt lyng at the
mouth of great Choptank River lyng in Dorchester County in Maryland . . .
share and share alike. . . ,

"Dost see't, boy?" Andrew demanded. "Dost grasp it, damn ye? Tis
Cooke's Point; 'tis my dear sweet Maiden, where the twain of ye saw day-
light and your mother lies yet! There's this house too, and the place on
Plumtree Street, but Cooke's Point's where my heart lies; Maiden's my
darling, that I raised out o' the wilderness. 'Tis your legacy, Eben, your
inheritance; 'tis your personal piece o' the great wide world to husband
and to fructify— and a noble legacy 'tis, b'm'faith! 'Share and share alike/
but the job of managing an estate is man's work, not woman's. Twas for
this I got, reared, and schooled ye,, and 'tis for this ye must work and gird
yourself, damn ye, to make ye worthy oft, and play no more at shiU I,
shall II"

[ rO ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Ebenezer blushed. "I am sensible I have been remiss, and I've naught
to say in my defense, save that 'twas not stupidity undid me at Cambridge,
but feckless indirection. Would God I'd had dear Henry Burlingame to
steer and prod me!"

"Burlingamer cried Andrew. "Fogh! He came no nearer the baccalau-
reate than yourself. Nay, 'twas your dear rascal Burlingame ruined ye,
methinks, in not teaching ye how to work." He waved the draft of his
will "Think ye your Burlingame will ever have a Maiden to bequeath?
Fie on that scoundrel! Mention his name no more to me, an't please ye,
lest I suffer a stroke!"

"I am sorry/' said Ebenezer, who had mentioned Burlingame's name
intentionally to observe his father's reaction: he now concluded it would
be impolitic to describe in any detail his sojourn in London. "I know no
way to show you how your magnanimity shames me for my failure. Send
me back to Cambridge, if you will, and I swear on oath I'll not repeat my
former errors."

Andrew reddened. "Cambridge my arse! Tis Maryland shall be your
Cambridge, and a field of sot-weed your library! And for diploma, if ye
apply yourself, haply you'll frame a bill of exchange for ten thousandweight
of Oronoco!"

"You mean to send me to Maryland, then?" Ebenezer asked uncom-
fortably.

"Aye, to till the ground that spawned ye, but thou'rt by no means fit
for't yet; I fear the University hath so addled and debilitated ye, you've
not the head to manage an estate nor the back to till it. Twill take some
doing to sweat Burlingame and the college out o' ye, but A man must vtdk
ere he runs. What ye want's but an honest apprenticeship: I mean to send
ye forthwith to London, to clerk for the merchant Peter Paggen. Study the
ins and outs of the plantation trade, as did I and my father before me,
and I swear 'twill stand ye in better stead than aught ye heard at Cam-
bridge, when time comes for ye to take your place at Maiden!"

Now this course of life was not one that Ebenezer would have chosen
for himself— but then neither was any other, and he had no grounds for
refusing this or any proposal, for when he looked within himself he found
such a motley host of opinions, of all ilks and stamps, anarchic and shifting,
that to mark the strongest was a thing beyond him. Moreover, when he
reflected upon it, he was not blind to a certain attractiveness about the
planter's life as he envisioned it: he could see himself inspecting the labor
of the fields from the back of his favorite riding-horse; smoking the tobacco

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [51]

that made him wealthy; drinking quince or perry from his own distillery
with a few refined companions; whiling away the idle evenings on the
gallery of his manor-house, remarking the mallards out on the river, and
perhaps composing occasional verses of ease and dignity. He was, alas, not
blind to the attractiveness of any kind of life. And more immediately, the
prospect of returning to London with a clear conscience pleased him.

Therefore he said, halfheartedly but not cheerlessly, "Just: as you wish,
Father. I shall try to do well."

"Why, thank Heav'n for that!" Andrew declared, and even contrived a
thin smile. " 'Thus far hath the Lord helped usl' Leave me now for the
nonce, ere I collapse from very weariness."

Andrew settled back in bed, turned his face to the wall, and said no more.

5: EBENEZER COMMENCES HIS SECOND SOJOURN
IN LONDON, AND FARES UNSPECTACULARLY

BECAUSE OF THE GREAT UNREST IN THE NATION AT THIS TIME, OCCASIONED

by the conflict between James II and William of Orange, Ebenezer, at his
father's advice, did not return toiondon until the winter of 1688, by which
time William and Mary were securely established on the throne of Eng-
land. The idle year at St. Giles was, although he had no way of realizing
it at the time, perhaps Ebenezer's nearest approach to happiness. He had
nothing at all to do except read, walk about the countryside or London-
without-the-walls, and talk at length with his sister. Although he could not
look to his future with enthusiasm, at least he had not to bear the respon-
sibility of having chosen it himself. In the spring and summer, when the
weather turned fine, he grew too restless even to read. He felt full to burst-
ing with ill-defined potentialities. Often he would sit a whole morning in
the shade of a pear tree behind the house playing airs on the tenor re-
corder, whose secrets he had learned from Burlingame. He cared for no
sports; he wished not even to see anyone, except Anna. The air, drenched
with sun and clover, made him volatile. On several occasions he was so
full of feeling as to fear he'd swoon if he could not empty himself of it.
But often as he tried to set down verses, he could not begin: his fancy
would not settle on stances and conceits. He spent the warm months in

[ 52 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

a kind of nervous exaltation which, while more upsetting than pleasurable
at the moment, left a sweet taste in his mouth at day's end. In the evenings,
often as not, he would watch meteors slide down the sky till he grew dizzy.

And though again he could not know it at the time, this idle season
afforded him what was to be his last real communion with his sister for
many a year. Even so, it was for the most part inarticulate; somewhere they'd
lost the knack of talking closely to each other. Of the things doubtless most
important to each they spoke not at all— Ebenezer's failure at Cambridge
and his impending journey; Anna's uncertain past connection with
Burlingame and her present isolation from and lack of interest in suitors
of any sort. But they walked together a great deal, and one hot forenoon
in August, as they sat under a sycamore near a rocky little stream-branch
that ran through the property, Anna clutched his right arm, pressed her
forehead to it, and wept for several minutes. Ebenezer comforted her as
best he could without inquiring the reason for her tears: he assumed it was
some feeling about their maturity that grieved her. At this time, in their
twenty-second year of life, Anna looked somewhat older* than her brother,

Andrew, once his son's affairs seemed secure, grew gradually stronger,
and by autumn was apparently in excellent health again, though for the
rest of his life he looked older than his years. In early November he de-
clared the political situation stable enough to warrant the boy's departure;
a week later Ebenezer bade the household good-bye and set out for
London.

The first thing he did, after finding lodging for himself in a Pudding
Lane boardinghouse, was visit Burlingame's address, to see how his old
friend fared. But to his surprise he found the premises occupied by new
tenants—a draper and his family— and none of the neighbors knew any-
thing of Henry's whereabouts. That evening, therefore, when he'd seen to
the arrangement of his belongings, he went to Locket's, hoping to find
there, if not Burlingame himself, at least some of their mutual acquaintances
who might have news of him.

He found three of the group to which Burlingame had introduced him.
One was Ben Oliver, a great fat poet with beady eyes and black curly
hair, arrogant and energetic, a very rakehell, who some said was a Jew.
Another was Tom Trent, a short sallow boy from Christ's College, also a
poet: he'd been sent to prepare for the ministry, but had so loathed the
idea that he caught French pox from a doxy he kept in his quarters by
way of contempt for his calling, and was finally dismissed upon his spread-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 53 ]

ing the contagion to his tutor and at least two professors who had befriended
him. Since then he'd come to take a great interest in religion: he liked no
poets save Dante and Milton, maintained a virtual celibacy, and in his
cups was wont to shout verses of Scripture at the company in his great bass
voice. The third, Dick Merriweather, was despite his surname a gloojny
pessimist, ever contemplating suicide, who wrote only elegiac verse on the
subject of his own demise. Whatever the disparity in their temperaments,
however, the three men lived in the same house and were almost always
found together.

"I'God, 'tis Eben Cooke the scholar!" cried Ben upon seeing him. "Have
a bottle with us, fellow, and teach us the Truth!"
"We thought you dead," said Dick.

Tom Trent said nothing: he was unmoved by greetings and farewells.
Ebenezer returned their greetings, drank a drink with them, and, after
explaining his return to London, inquired after Burlingame.

"We've seen none of him for a year," Ben said. "He left us shortly after
you did, and I'd have said the twain of you were off together on some
lark."

"I recall hearing he'd gone to sea again," Dick Merriweather said. "Belike
he's at the bottom oft ere now, or swimming in the belly of a whale."

"Stay," said Ben. "Now I think on't, didn't I have it from Tom here
'twas Trinity College Henry went back to, to earn his baccalaureate?"

" 'Twas what I had from Joan Toast, that had it from Henry the last

night ere he left," Tom said indifferently. "I'll own I pay scant heed to

gossip of goings and comings, and 'tis not impossible I misheard her."

"Who is this Joan Toast then, pray, and where might I find her?" asked

Ebenezer.

"No need to seek her'9 Ben laughed; "she's but a merry whore of the
place, and you may ask what you will of her anon, when she comes in to
find a bedfellow."

Ebenezer waited until the girl arrived, and learned only that Burlingame
had spoken of his intention to ransack the libraries of Cambridge for a
fortnight— for what purpose she did not know, nor did any amount of in-
quiry around the winehouse shed more light on his intentions or present
whereabouts. During the next week Ebenezer lost no opportunity to ask
after his friend, but when it became clear that no clues were to be found,
he reluctantly abandoned his efforts, wrote Anna a distressed note inform-
ing her of the news, and in the following months and years came almost to

[ tA ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

forget Henry's existence— though to be sure, he felt the loss acutely when-
ever the name occurred to him.

Meanwhile, he presented himself at the establishment of the merchant
Peter Paggen, and, on producing letters from his father, was set to totting
up accounts with the junior apprentices at a little desk among many others
in a large room. It was understood that if he applied himself diligently and
showed some ability in his work, he would be promoted after a week or so
to a post from which he could observe to better advantage the workings of
the plantation trade (Mr. Paggen had extensive dealings in Maryland and
Virginia). Unfortunately, this promotion was never granted him. For one
thing, no matter how hard he tried, Ebenezer could not concentrate his
attention on the accounts. He would begin to add a column of totally
meaningless figures and realize five minutes later that he'd been staring at
a wen on the neck of the boy in front of him, or rehearsing in his mind a
real or imaginary conversation between himself and Burlingame, or draw-
ing mazes on a bit of scratch-paper. For the same reason, though he had
by no means the troublemaker's temperament, his untamable fancy more
than once led him to be charged with irresponsibility: one day, for example,
scarcely conscious of what he was about, he involved himself entirely in a
game with a small black ant that had wandered across the page. The rule of
the game, which he invested with the inexorability of natural law, was that
every time the ant trod unwittingly upon a 3 or a 9, Ebenezer would close
his eyes and tap the page thrice, smartly and randomly, with the point of
his quill. Although his role of Deus civi NatUTa precluded mercy, his senti-
ments were unequivocally on the side of the ant: with an effort that brought
sweat to his brow he tried by force of thought to steer the hapless creature
from dangerous numbers; he opened his eyes after every series of taps, half
afraid to look at the paper. The game was profoundly exciting. After some
ten or fifteen minutes the ant had the bad luck to be struck by a drop of
ink not a half inch from the 9 that had triggered the bombardment: flailing
blindly, he inked a tiny trail straight back to the 9 again, and this time,
after being bracketed by the first two taps, he was smitten squarely with
the third. Ebenezer looked down to find him curled and dying in the loop
of the digit. Tears of compassion, tempered with vast understanding and
acceptance of the totality of life and the unalterable laws of the universe,
welled in his eyes; his genital stiffened. At last the ant expired. Suddenly
self-conscious, Ebenezer glanced around to see whether anyone had no-
ticed him, and everyone in the room laughed aloud; they had witnessed

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 55 ]

the whole performance. From that day on they regarded him as more or
less mad instead of simply odd; luckily for Ebenezer, however, they be-
lieved him to have some special connection with their employer Mr.
Paggen, and so made little of the incident except among themselves.

But it would not be fair to suggest that Ebenezer was entirely responsi-
ble for his impasse. There were a few occasions during the first year when
he managed to do his work satisfactorily, even intelligently, for several
weeks running, and yet no mention was made of transferring him to the
promised post. Only once did he muster courage enough to inquire about
it: Mr. Paggen made him a vague reply which he accepted eagerly, in order
to terminate the interview, and never spoke of it again. Actually, except
for infrequent twinges of conscience, Ebenezer was quite content to
languish among the junior apprentices: he had learned the job and was
frightened at the prospect of learning another. Moreover, he found the
city suited to his languor; his free hours he spent with his friends in the
coffee-houses, taverns, or theaters. Now and again he devoted a Sunday,
without much success, to his writing-desk. And in general he came quite to
forget what it was he was supposed to be doing in London.

It was withal a curious time in his life. If not actually satisfying, the
routine was at any rate in no way unpleasant, and Ebenezer floated along
in it like a fitful sleeper in a warm wash of dreams. Often, chameleonlike,
he was but a reflection of his situation: were his companions boasting the
tenuousness of their positions he might declare, in a burst of camaraderie^
"Shpuld old Andy discover my situation, 'twould be off to Maryland with
me, sirs, and no mistake!" As often he went out of his way to differ with
them, and half-yearned for the bracing life of the plantations. Still other
times he'd sit like a stuffed stork all the afternoon without a word. So, one
day cocksure, one day timorous; one day fearless, one craven; now the natty
courtier, now the rumpled poet— and devil the hue that momently colored
him, he'd look a-fidget at the rest of the spectrum. For what's red to a
rainbow?

All of which is to say, if you wish, that insofar as to be is to be in essence
the same Johnny-come-Friday that was John o' Thursday, why, this
Ebenezer Cooke was no man at all. As for Andrew, he must have been
incurious about his boy's life in London, or else believed that A good post
is worth a long wait. The idyl lasted not for one, but for five or six years,
or until 1694— in the March of which, when a disastrous wager brought it
to a sudden end, our story begins.

6: THE MOMENTOUS WAGER BETWEEN EBENEZER
AND BEN OLIVER, AND ITS UNCOMMON RESULT

PIMP IN EBENEZER'S CIRCLE WAS ONE WIRY, RED-HAIRED, BEFRECKLED
ex-Dubliner named John McEvoy, twenty-one years old and devoid of
school education, as long in energy and resourcefulness as short in money
and stature, who spent his days abed, his evenings pimping for his privileged
companions, and the greater part of his nights composing airs for the lute
and flute, and who from the world of things that men have valued prized
none but three: his mistress Joan Toast (who, whore as well, was both his
love and his living), his music, and his liberty. No one-crown frisker Joan,
but a two-guinea hen well worth the gold to bed her, as knew every man
among them but Ebenezer; she loved her John for all he was her pimp,
and he her truly too for all she was his whore— for no man "was ever fust
a. pimp, nor any woman merely whore. They seemed, in fact, a devoted
couple, and jealous.

All spirit, imagination,, and brave brown eyes, small-framed, large-
breasted, and tight-skinned (though truly somewhat coarse-pored, and
stringy in the hair, and with teeth none of the best), this Joan Toast was
his for the night who'd two guineas to take her for, and indignify her as
he would, she'd give him his gold's worth and more, for she took that
pleasure in her work as were she the buyer and he the vendor; but come
morning she was cold as a fish and back to her Johnny McEvoy, and should
her lover of the night past so much as wink eye at her in the light of day,
there was no more Joan Toast for him at any price.

Ebenezer had of course observed her for some years as she and his com-
panions came and went in their harlotry, and from the talk in the coffee-
house had got to know about her in great detail at second hand a number
of things that his personal disorganization precluded learning at first. When
m manly moments he thought of her at all it was merely as a tart whom,
should he one day find himself single-minded enough, it might be sweet
to hire to initiate him at long last into the mysteries. For it happened that,
though near thirty, Ebenezer was yet a virgin, and this for the reason ex-
plained in the previous chapters, that he was no person at all: he could
picture any kind of man taking a woman-the bold as well as the bashful,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 57 ]

the clean green boy and the dottermg gray lecher— and work out in his
mind the speeches appropriate to each under any of several sorts of cir-
cumstances. But because he felt himself no more one of these than another
and admired all, when a situation presented itself he could never choose
one role to play over all the rest he knew, and so always ended up either
turning down the chance or, what was more usually the case, retreating
gracelessly and in confusion, if not always embarrassment. Generally, there-
fore, women did not give him a second glance, not because he was uncomely
—he had marked well that some of the greatest seducers have the faces of
goats and the manner of lizards— but because, a woman having taken in
his ungainly physique, there remained no other thing for her to notice.

Indeed he might have gone virgin to his grave— for there are urgencies
that will be heeded if not one way then perforce another, and that same
knuckly hand that penned him his couplets took no wooing to make his
quick mistress— but on this March night in 1694 he was noticed by Joan
Toast, in the following manner: the gallants were sitting in a ring at
Locket's,, as was their custom, drinking wine, gossiping, and boasting their
conquests, both of the muse and of lesser wenches. There were Dick
Merriweather, Tom Trent, and Ben Oliver already well wined, Johnny
McEvoy and Joan Toast out for a customer, and Ebenezer incom*
municado.

"Heigh-ho!" sighed Dick at a lull in their talk. " Twere a world one
could live in did wealth follow wit, for gold's the best bait to snare sweet
conies with, and then we poets were fearsome trappers all!"

"No need gold," replied Ben, "did God but give women half an eye for
their interests. What makes your good lover, if not fire and fancy? And for
whom if not us poets are fire and fancy the very stock in trade? From
which 'tis clear, that of all men the poet is most to be desired as a lover: if
his mistress have beauty, his is the eye will most be gladdened by't; if she
have it not, his is the imagination that best can mask its lack. If she displease
him, and he slough her off shortly* she hath at least had for a time the best
that woman can get; if she please him, he will haply fix her beauty for
good and all in verse, where neither age nor pox can spoil it. And as poets
as a class are to be desired in this respect over other sorts of fellows, so
should the best poet prove the best lover; were women wise to their in-
terests they'd make seeking him out their life-work, and finding him would
straight lay their favors a-quiver in his lap— nay, upon his very writing-desk—
and beg him to look on 'em kindly!"

"Out on't, thenl" said Dick to Joan Toast "Ben speaks truly, and 'tis

[ 58 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

you shall pay me two guineas this night! Marry, and were't not that I am
poor as any church mouse this week and have not long to live, you'd not
buy immortality so cheap! My counsel is to snatch the bargain while it lasts,
for a poet cannot long abide this world."

To which Joan rejoined without heat, "Fogh! Could any man of ye
rhyme as light as talk, or swive grand as swagger, why, your verse'd be on
every lip in London and your arse in every bed, I swear! But Talk pays no
toll: I look to pacify nor ear nor bum with aught o' ye but my sweet John,
who struts not a strut nor brags no brags, but saves words for his melodies
and strength for the bed."
"Hi!" applauded Ben. "Well put!"

"If ill timed," John McEvoy added, frowning lightly upon her. "Let no
such sentiments come 'twixt thee and two guineas this night, love, or thy
sweet John'll have nor strength nor song, but a mere rumbly gut to bed ye
with on the morrow."

" 'Sblood!" remarked Tom Trent without emotion. "If Lady Joan reason
rightly, there's one among us who far more merits her favor than you,
McEvoy, for as you speak one word to our two, so speak you ten to his one:
I mean yon Ebenezer, who for lack of words should be chiefest poet and
cocksman in this or any winehouse— John Milton and Don Juan Tenorio
in a single skin!"

"Indeed he may be," vowed Joan, who, being by chance seated next to
Ebenezer, gave him a pat on the hand.

"At any rate," smiled McEvoy, "having heard not a line of his making,
I've no evidence he's not a poet."

"Nor I he's not that other," Joan added smartly, "and 'tis more praise
on both counts than I can praise the rest oy ye." Then she colored some-
what and added: "I must own I've heard it said, Many fat but love lean,
for as how your fat fellow is most often a jolly and patient husband, but
your bony lank is long all over and springy in the bed. Howbeit, I've no
proof of the thing."

"Then 'sdeath, you shall have it!" cried Ben Oliver, "for there's more
to extension than simple length. When the subject in hand's the tool of
love, prithee give weight to the matter of diameter, for diameter's what
gives weight to love's tool-whether 'tis in hand or in the subject, for that
matter! Nay, lass, I'll stick by my fat, as't hath stuck by me. A plump cock's
the very devil of the hen house, so they say: he treads 'em with authority!"
"Tis too weighty a question to leave unsettled," declared McEvoy.
"What think you, Tom?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 59 ]

"I take no interest in affairs of the flesh/' said Tom, "but I have e'er
observed that women, like men, have chiefest relish in things forbidden,
and prize no conquest like that of a priest or saint. Tis my guess, moreover,
that they find their trophy doubly sweet, inasmuch as 'tis hard come by to
begin with, and when got 'tis fresh and potent as vintage brandy, for having
been so long bottled and corked."

"Dick?"

"I see no sense in it," Merriweather said. " Tis not a man's weight, but
his circumstances, that make him a lover. The sweetest lover of all, I should
think, is the man about to end his life, who would by the act of love bid
his adieu to this world, and at the moment of greatest heat pass on the
next."

"Well, now," McEvoy said, "ye owe it to England to put an answer to't.
What I propose is this, that ye put each your best foot forward, so to speak,
this same night, and let Joan take eight guinea from him she names loser.
Thus the winner gets glory for him and his kind and a swiving to boot;
the losers get still a swiving— ay, a double swiving!— and my good woman
and I get chops instead of chitterlings for a day. Done?"

"Not I," said Tom. " Tis a sorry sport, is lust, that makes man a slavering
animal on embracing his mistress and a dolorous vegetable after."

"Nor I," said Dick, "for had I eight guineas I'd hire three trollops and a
bottle of Madeira for one final debauch ere I end my life."

"Marry, 'tis done for all o' me," said Ben, "and heartily, too, for your
Joan's had none of old Ben these two months past."

"Nor shall I more," swore Joan cheerfully, "for thou'rt a sweatbox and
a stinkard, sir. My memory of our last will serve as your performance, when
I came away bruised and abused as a spaniel bitch from a boar's pen, and
had need of a course of liniments to drive out the aches and a course of
hot baths to carry off the smell. For the rest of the wager, 'tis Mr. Cooke's
to yea or nay."

"So be't," shrugged Ben, "though had I known at the time 'twas that
studding I'd be judged by, you'd have found me more bull than boar and
haply have a Minotaur to show for't. What say you, Ebenezer?"

Now Ebenezer had followed this raillery intently and would have joined
in it, perhaps, but that from his overstocked wardrobe no particular style
came readily to hand. Then, when Joan Toast touched him, the hand she
touched tingled as if galvanized, and on the instant Ebenezer felt his
soul rise up in answer. Had not Boyle shown, and Burlingame taught,
that electrical attraction takes place in a vacuum? Well, here was Boyle

[ 60 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

figured in the empty poet: the pert girl worked some queer attraction in
him, called forth a spark from the vacuum of his character, and set him all
suddenly a-burn and a-buzz.

But did this prick-up afford the man identity? On the contrary: as he
saw the direction the twitting took and heard McEvoy give birth to the
wager, he but buzzed and burned the more; his mind ran madly to no
end like a rat in a race and could not engage the situation. His sensibility
all erected and hard at attention, he could feel the moment coming when
the eyes of all would swing to bear on him with some question which he'd
be expected to answer. It was the wait for it, together with the tingle of
Joan Toast's touch and the rush to find a face to meet the wager with, that
made him sick when his ears heard Ben's "What say you, Ebenezer?" and
his two eyes saw ten look to him for reply.

What say? What say? His windpipe glotted with a surfeit of alternatives;
but did he urge one up like a low-pressured belch,, the suck of the rest
ungassed it. Eyes grew quizzical; smiles changed character. Ebenezer
reddened, not from embarrassment but from internal pressure.

"What ails ye, friend?" McEvoy.

"Speak up, man!" Ben Oliver.

"'Swounds! Hell pop!" Dick Merriweather.

One Cooke eyebrow fluttered. A mouth-corner ticked. He closed and
unclosed his hands and his mouth, and the strain near retched him, but it
was all a dry heave, a false labor: no person issued from it. He gaped and
sweated.

"Gah," he said.

"'Sbloodl" Tom Trent. "He's ill! Tis the vapors! The fellow wants a
clyster!"

"Ga/i," said Ebenezer again, and then froze tight and said no more, nor
moved a single muscle.

By this time his behavior had been noticed by the other patrons of the
winehouse, and a number of the curious gathered round him where he sat,
now rigid as a statue.

"Hi, there, throw't off!" demanded one fellow, snapping his fingers di-
rectly before Ebenezer's face.

"'Tis the wine has dagged him, belike," a wag suggested, and tweaked
the poet's nose, also without effect. "Aye," he affirmed, "the lad's bepickled
himself with't. Mark ye, 'tis the fate awaits us all!"

"As you please," declared Ben Oliver with a grin; "I say 'tis a plain case

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 6l ]

of the staggering fearfuls, and I claim the victory by default, and there's an
end on't."

"Aye, but what doth it profit you?" Dick Merriweather asked.

"What else but Joan Toast this night?" laughed Ben, slapping three
guineas onto the table. "Upon your honor as judge,, John McEvoy, will
you refuse me? Test my coins, fellow: they'll ring true as the next man's,
and there's three of 'em."

McEvoy shrugged his shoulders and looked inquiringly at his Joan.

"Not in a pig's arse," she sniffed. She flounced from her chair and with
a wink at the company flung her arms around Ebenezer's neck and ca-
ressed his cheek.

"Ah, me ducky, me dove!" she cooed. "Will ye leave me to the mercies of
yon tub o' suet, to lard like any poor partridge? Save me, sirl"

But Ebenezer sat unmoved and unmoving.

"Tis no lardoon thou'rt in for," Ben said. "Tis the very spit!"

"Ah! Ah!" cried Joan as though terrified and, clambering onto Ebene-
zer's lap, hid her face in his neck. "I shake and I shiver!"

The company shouted with delight. Joan grasped one of Ebenezer's
large ears in each hand and drew his face nose to nose with her own.

"Carry me off!" she implored him.

"To the spit with her!" urged an onlooker. "Baste the hussy!"

"Aye," said Ben, and crooked his finger at her. "Come along now,
sweetmeat."

"As ye be a man and a poet, Eben Cooke," Joan scolded, jumping to her
feet and shouting in his ear, "I lay it upon ye to match this rascal's gold
with your own and have done with't. If ye will not speak up and act the
man, I'm Ben's and be damned t'ye!"

Ebenezer gave a slight start and suddenly stood up, blinking as if just
roused from bed. His features twitched, and he alternately blushed and
paled as he opened his mouth to speak.

"I had five guineas but this morning by messenger from my father,7' he
said weakly.

"Thou'rt a fool," said Dick Merriweather. "She asks but three, and
had you spoke sooner 'twould've cost you but two!"

"Will ye raise him two bob, Ben?" asked John McEvoy, who had been
watching the proceedings serenely.

"Indeed he shan't!" snapped Joan. "Is this a horse auction, then, and
I a mare to be rid by the high bidder?" She took Ebenezer's arm fondly.

[ g2 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Only match Ben's three guineas, ducky, and speak no more oft The
night's near done, and I am ill o' this lewd raillery."

Ebenezer gawked, swallowed, and shifted his weight

"I cannot match it here," he said, "for I've but a crown in my purse." He
glanced around him wildly. "The money is in my rooms," he added, teeter-
ing as if to swoon. "Come with me there, and you shall have't all"

"Hello, the lad's no fool!" said Tom Trent. "He knows a thing or two!"

"'Sblood, a very Jew!" agreed Dick Merriweather.

"Better a fowl in hand than two flying" Ben Oliver laughed, and jingled
his three guineas. "'Tis a hoax and fraud, to lure honest women to their
ruin! What would your father say, Ebenezer, did he get wind oft? Shame^
shame!"

"Pay the great ass no heed," said Joan.

Ebenezer swayed again, and several of the company tittered.

"I swear to you " he began.

"Shame! Shame!" cried Ben once more, wagging a fat finger at him to
the company's delight

Ebenezer tried again, but could do no more than raise his hand and let
it fall.

"Stand off!" someone warned uneasily. "He is starching up again!"

"Shame!" roared Ben.

Ebenezer goggled at Joan Toast for a second and then lurched full speed
across the room and out of the winehouse.

7: THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN EBENEZER AND
THE WHORE JOAN TOAST, INCLUDING THE TALE OF
THE GREAT TOM LEECH.

AS A RULE EBENEZER WOULD AFTER SUCH A BUMBLE HAVE BEEN IN FOR

some hours of motionless reflection in his room. It was his habit (for such
rigidities as this at Locket's were not new to him) upon recovering himself
to sit at his writing-desk, looking-glass in hand, and stare fish-eyed at his
face, which only during such spells was still. But this time, though he did
indeed take up his vis-a-vis> the face he regarded was anything but vacant:
on the contrary, where typically he'd have seen a countenance blank as an
owl's, now he saw a roil as of swallows round a chimney pot; whereas an-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 63 ]

other time he'd have heard in his head but a cosmic rustle, as though
his skull were a stranded wentletrap, now he sweated, blushed, and dreamed
two score ragged dreams. He studied the ears Joan Toast had touched, as
though by study to restore their tingle, and when he could by no means
succeed, he recognized with alarm that it was his heart she now had
hands on.

"Ah God/' he cried aloud, "that I'd risen to the wager!"

The manly sound of his voice arrested him. Moreover, it was the first
time he'd ever spoken to himself aloud, and he failed to be embarrassed
by it.

"Had I but another chance," he declared to himself, "'twould be no
chore to snatch the moment! Lord, into what ferment have those eyes put
me! Into what heat those bosoms!"

He took up the glass again, made himself a face, and inquired, "Who art
thou now, queer fellow? Hi, there is a twitch in thy blood, I see— a fidget
in thy soul! Twere a right manly man Joan Toast would taste, were the
wench but here to taste him!"

It occurred to him to return to Locket's to seek her out, on the chance
she'd not have succumbed to Ben Oliver's entreaties. But he was reluctant
to confront his friends so soon after his flight, in the first place, and in the
second

"Curse me for my innocence!" he railed, pounding his fist upon some
blank papers on the writing-desk. "What knowledge have I of such things?
Suppose she should come with me? 'Sblood! What then?

"Yet 'tis now or never," he told himself grimly. "This Joan Toast sees in
me what no woman hath before, nor I myself: a man like other men. And
for aught I know she hath made me one, for when else have I talked to
myself? When else felt so potent? To Locket's," he ordered himself, "or go
virgin to the grave!"

Nevertheless he did not get up, but lapsed instead into lecherous, com-
plicated reveries of rescue and gratitude; of shipwreck or plague and mutual
survivorship; of abduction, flight, and violent assault; and, sweetest of all, of
towering fame and casual indulgence. When at length he realized that he
was not going to Locket's at all, he was overcome with self-loathing and
returned, in despair, once more to the mirror.

He calmed at the sight of the face in it.

"Odd fellow, there! Ooo-ooo/ Hey-nonny-nonny! Fa-la!"

He leered and mouthed into the glass until his eyes brimmed with tears,

[64] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and then, exhausted, buried his face in his long aims. Presently he fell
asleep.

There came, an uncertain time later, a knocking at the entrance door
below, and before Ebenezer was awake enough to wonder at it, his own
door was opened by his servant, Bertrand, who had been sent to him just a
few days earlier by his father. This Bertrand was a thin-faced, wide-eyed
bachelor in his later forties whom Ebenezer knew scarcely at all, for
Andrew had hired him while the young man was still at Cambridge. With
him, when he had come from the St. Giles establishment, he had brought
the following note from Andrew, in an envelope sealed with wax:

Ebenezer,

The Bearer of this note is Bertrand Burton, my Valet since 1686, and now
yours, if you want him. He is a diligent enough fellow, if something presump-
tuous, and will make you a good man if you hold him to his place. Mrs Twigg
and he got on ill together, to the point where I had either to sack him or
lose her, without whom I could scarce manage my house. Yet deeming it a hard
matter to sack the fellow outright, whose only fault is, that though he never
forgets his work, he oft forgets his place, I have promoted him out of my service
into yours. I shall pay him his first quarters wage; after that, if you want him,
I presume your post with Paggen will afford him.

Though his current wage from Peter Paggen, which was precisely what
it had been in 1688, was barely adequate to keep himself, Ebenezer none-
theless had welcomed Bertrand's service, at least for the three months dur-
ing which it was to cost him nothing. Luckily, the room adjoining his own
was unoccupied at the time, and he had arranged with his landlord for
Bertrand to lodge there, where he was always within call.

Now the man stepped into the room in nightshirt and cap, all smiles and
winks, said, "A lady to see you, sir/' and, to Ebenezer's great surprise,
ushered Joan Toast herself into the room.

"I shall retire at once," he announced, winking again, and left them be-
fore Ebenezer could recover sufficiently to protest. He was extremely
embarrassed and not a little alarmed at being alone with her, but Joan, not
a whit disturbed, came over to where he still sat at the writing table and
bussed him lightly upon the cheek.

"Say not a word/' she ordered, taking off her hat. "I know well I'm
tardy, and I ask your pardon for't."

Ebenezer sat dumb, too astonished to speak. Joan strode blithely to the
windows, closed the curtains, and commenced undressing.

Tis your friend Ben Oliver's to blame, with his three guineas, and his

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 65 ]

four guineas, and his five guineas, and his great hands both a-clench to lay
hold on me! But a shilling o'er your five he couldn't offer, or wouldn't, and
since 'twas you first offered it, I'm quit o' the brute with conscience clear."

Ebenezer stared at her, head afire.

"Come along now, sweet," Joan said presently, and turned to him
entirely unclothed. "Put thy guineas upon the table and let's to bed.
Faith, but there's a nip in the air this night! Brrr! Jump to't, now!" She
sprang to the bed and snuggled under the coverlets, drawing them up
around her chin.

"Come along!" she said again, a bit more briskly.

"Ah God, I cannot!" Ebenezer said. His face was rapturous, his eyes
were wild.

"Ye what?" Joan cried, throwing back the covers and sitting up in alarm.

"I cannot pay thee," Ebenezer declared.

"Not pay me! What prank is this, sir, ye make me butt of, when I have
put off Ben Oliver and his five gold guineas? Out with thy money now,
Master Cooke, and off with thy breeches, and prank me no pranks!"

"Tis no prank, Joan Toast," said Ebenezer. "I cannot pay thee five
guineas, or four guineas, or three. I cannot pay thee a shilling.. Nay, not so
much as a farthing."

"What! Are ye paupered, then?" She gripped his shoulders as if to shake
him. "Marry, sir, open wide those great cow's eyes, that I may claw them
from out their sockets! Think ye to make a fool o' me?" She swung her
legs over the side of the bed.

"Nay, nay, lady!" Ebenezer cried,, falling to his knees before her. "Nay,
I have the five guineas, and more. But how price the priceless? How buy
Heaven with simple gold? Ah, Joan Toast, ask me not to cheapen thee so!
Was't for gold that silver-footed Thetis shared the bed of Peleus, Achilles'
sire? Think thee Venus and Anchises did their amorous work on considera-
tion of five guineas? Nay, sweet Joan, a man seeks not in the market for the
favors of a goddess!"

"Let foreign bawds run their business as't please 'em," Joan declared,
somewhat calmer. " 'Tis five guineas the night for this one, and pay ere ye
play. Do ye reckon it cheap, then pleasure in thy bargain: 'tis all one to
me. What a temper ye put me in with thy not a farthing! I had near
leaped ye! Come along, now, and save thy conceits for a love sonnet in the
morning."

"Ah, dear God, Joan, wilt thou not see?" said Ebenezer, still down upon
his knees. " 'Tis not for common sport I crave thee, as might another: such

[66] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

lechery I leave to mere gluttonous whoremongers like Ben Oliver. What I
crave of thee cannot be bought!"

"Aha/' smiled Joan, "so 'tis a matter o' strange tastes, is't? Fd not have
guessed it by the honest look o' ye, but think not so quickly 'tis out o' the
question. Well do I know There's more -ways to the woods than one, and
if t work no great or lasting hurt, why, 'tis but a matter o7 price to me, sir.
Name me thy game, and I'll fix thee thy fee/'

"Joan, Joan, put by this talk!" cried Ebenezer, shaking his head, "Can
you not see it tears my heart? What's past is past; I cannot bear to think
on't, how much the less hear it from thy sweet lips! Dear girl, I swear to thee
now I am a virgin, and as I come to thee pure and undefiled, so in my
mind you come to me; whate'er hath gone before, speak not of it. Nay!"
he warned, for Joan's mouth dropped open. "Nay, not a word oft, for 'tis
over and done. Joan Toast, I love thee! Ah, that startles thee! Aye, I swear
to Heaven I love thee, and 'twas to declare it I wished thee here. Speak no
more of your awful trafficking, for I love thy sweet body unspeakably, and
that spirit which it so fairly houses, unimaginably!"

"Nay, Mr. Cooke, 'tis an unbecoming jest ye make, to call thyself virgin,"
Joan said doubtfully.

"As God is my witness," swore Ebenezer, "I have known no woman
carnally to this night, nor ever loved at all."

"But how is that?" Joan demanded. "Why, when I was but a slip of a
thing, not yet fourteen and innocent of the world's villainy, I recall I once
cried out at table how I had commenced a queer letting of blood, and
what was I ill of? And send quick for the leeches! And everyone laughed
and made strange jests, but none would tell me what was the cause oft
Then my young bachelor uncle Harold approached me privily, and kissed
me upon the lips and stroked my hair, and told me 'twas no common
leech I wanted, for that I was letting much blood already; but that anon
when I had stopped I should come to him in secret, for he kept in his
rooms a great torn leech such as I had ne'er yet been bit by, the virtue of
which was, that it would restore by sweet infusions what I had lost. I be-
lieved without question all that he told me, for he was a great favorite o'
mine, more brother than uncle to me, and therefore I said naught to any-
one, but directly the curse left me went straight to his bedchamber, as he
had prescribed. 'Where is the great torn leech?' I asked him. 4I have't ready/
said he, *but it fears the light and will do its work only in darkness. Make
thyself ready,' said he, 'and I'll apply the leech where it must go/ *Very well,'

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [67]

said I, "but ye must tell me how to ready myself, Harold, for I know naught
of leeching/ 'Disrobe thyself/ said he, 'and lie down upon the bed/

"And so I stripped myself all naked, simple soul that I was, right before
his eyes, and lay down upon the bed as he directed— a skinny pup I, as yet
unbreasted and unfurred— and he blew out the candle. 'Ah, dear Harold!'
I cried. 'Come lie beside me on the bed, I pray, for I fear the bite o' thy
great torn leech in the dark!' Harold made me no answer, but shortly joined
me upon his bed. 'How is this?' I cried, feeling his skin upon me. 'Do you
mean to take the leech as well? Did you too lose blood?' 'Nay/ he laughed,
' 'tis but the manner whereby my leech must be applied. I have't ready for
ye, dear girl; are ye ready for't?' 'Nay, dear Harold,' I cried, 'I am fearful!
Where will it bite me? How will it hurt?' ' 'Twill bite where it must/ said
Harold, 'and 'twill pain ye a mere minute, and then pleasure ye enough/
'Ah, then,' I sighed, 'let us get by the pain and hasten the pleasure with all
speed. But prithee hold my hand, lest I cry out at the creature's bite/
*Ye shan't cry out,' Harold said then, 'for I shall kiss ye/

"And straightway he embraced me and kissed my mouth tight shut, and,
while we were a-kissing, suddenly I felt the great torn leech his fearful bite,
and I was maiden no more! At first I wept, not alone from the pain he'd
warned of, but from alarm at what I'd learned o' the leech's nature. But e'en
as Harold promised, the pain soon flew, and his great torn leech took
bite after bite till near sunup, by which time, though I was by no means
weary o' the leeching, my Harold had no more leech to leech with, but only
a poor cockroach or simple pismire, not fit for the work, which scurried
away at the first light. Twas then I learned the queer virtue o' this animal:
for just as a fleabite, the more ye scratch it, wants scratching the more, so,
once this creature had bit me, I longed for futher bites and was forever after
poor Harold and his leech, like an opium eater his phial. And though since
then I've suffered the bite of every sort and size— none more fearsome or
ravenous than my good John's— yet the craving plagues me still, till I shiver
at the thought o' the great torn leech!"

"Stop, I beg thee!" Ebenezer pleaded. "I cannot hear more! What, 'Dear
Uncle/ you call him, and 'Poor Harold'! Ah, the knave, the scoundrel,
to deceive you so, who loved and trusted him! Twas no leechery he put
thee to, but lechery, and laid thy maiden body forever in the bed of harlotry!
I curse him, and his ilk!"

"Ye say't with relish," smiled Joan, "as one who'd do the like with fire
in his eye and sweat on his arse, could he find himself a child fond as I. Nay,
Ebenezer, rail not at poor dear Harold, who is these several years under the

[ 68 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

sod from an ague got swiving ardently in cold chambers. Says I, 'tis but the
nature o' the leech to bite and of the leeched to want biting, and 'tis
a mystery and astonishment to me, since so many crave leeching and the
best leech is so lightly surfeited, how yours hath gone starved, as ye declare,
these thirty years! What, are ye a mere arrant sluggard, sir? Or are ye haply
o' that queer sort who lust for none but their own sex? Tis a thing past
grasping!"

"Nor the one nor the other," replied Ebenezer. "I am man in spirit as
well as body, and my innocence is not wholly my own choosing. I have
ere now been ready enough, but to grind love's grain wants mortar as well
as pestle; no man dances the morris dance alone^ and till this night no
woman e'er looked on me with favor."

"Marry!" laughed Joan. "Doth the ewe chase the ram, or the hen the
cock? Doth the field come to the plow for furrowing, or the scabbard to
the sword for sheathing? 'Tis all arsy-turvy ye look at the world!"

"That I grant," sighed Ebenezer, "but I know naught of the art of
seduction, nor have the patience for't."

"Fogh! There's no great labor to the bedding of women! For the most,
all a man need do, I swear, is ask plainly and politely, did he but know it"
"How is that?" exclaimed Ebenezer in astonishment "Are women then
so lecherous?"

"Nay," said Joan. "Think not we crave a swiving pure and simple at any
time as do men always-'tis oft a pleasure with us, but rarely a passion.
Howbeit, what with men forever panting at us like so many hounds at a
salt-bitch, and begging us put by our virtue and give 'em a tumble, and
withal despising us for whores and slatterns if we do; or bidding us be
faithful to our husbands and yet losing no chance to cuckold their truest
friends; or charging us to guard our chastity and yet assaulting it from all
quarters in every alleyway, carriage, or sitting room; or being soon bored
with us if we show no fire in swiving and yet sermoning us for sinners if we
do; inventing morals on the one hand and rape on the other; and in general
preaching us to virtue whilst they lure us on to vice-what with the pull and
haul of all this, I say, we women are forever at sixes and sevens, all fussed
and rattled and torn 'twixt what we ought and what we would, and so
entirely confounded, that we never know what we think on the matter or
how much license to grant from one minute to the next; so that if a man
commence the usual strut, pat, and tweak, we may thrust him from us (if
he do not floor us and have at us by main strength); and if he let us quite
alone, we are so happy of the respite we dare not make a move; but should

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 69 ]

e'er a man approach us in all honest friendship, and look upon us as fellow
humans and not just a bum and a bosom, from eyes other than a stud-
stallion's, and after some courteous talk should propose a cordial swiving as
one might a hand of whist (instead of inviting us to whist as lecherously as
though to bed) —if, I say, e'er a man should learn to make such a request in
such a manner, his bed would break 'neath the weight of grateful women,
and he would grow gray ere his time! But in sooth 'twill never happen,"
Joan concluded, "forasmuch as 'twould mean receiving a partner and not
taking a vassal: 'tis not mere sport a man lusts after, 'tis conquest-— else
philanderers were rare as the plague and not common as the pox. Do but
ask, Ebenezer, cordially and courteously, as ye would ask a small favor from
a good friend, and what ye ask shall rarely be refused. But ye must ask, else
in our great relief at not being hard pressed for't, we shall pass ye by."

"Indeed," admitted Ebenezer, shaking his head, "it had not struck me
ere now, what a sad lot is woman's. What beasts we are!"

"Ah, well," sighed Joan, " 'tis small concern o' mine, save when I reflect
on't now and again: a whore loses little sleep on such nice questions. So
long as a man hath my price in his purse and smells somewhat more sweet
than a tanyard and leaves me in peace come morning, I shan't say him
nay nor send him off ill-pleased with his purchase. And I love a virgin as a
child loves a new pup, to make him stand and beg for't* or lie and play
dead. Off your knees, then, and to bed with ye, ere ye take a quartan ague
from the draught! There's many a trick I'll teach ye!"

So saying she held out her arms to him, and Ebenezer, breaking at once
into sweat and goose bumps from the contest between his ardor and the
cold March draughts in which for a quarter hour he'd been kneeling,
embraced her fervently.

"Dear God, is't true?" he cried. "What astonishment it is, to be granted
all suddenly in fact what one hath yearned for time out of mind in dreams!
Dear heart, what a bewilderment! No words come! My arms fail me!"

"Let not thy purse fail thee," Joan remarked, "and for the rest, leave't
to me."

"But 'fore God I love thee, Joan Toast!" Ebenezer moaned. "Can it be
you think yet of the filthy purse?"

"Do but pay me my five guineas ere ye commence," Joan said, "and then
love me 'fore God or man, 'tis all one to me,"

"You will drive me to Bedlam with your five guineas!" Ebenezer shouted.
"I love thee as never man loved woman, I swear't, and rather would I
throttle thee, or suffer myself throttled, than turn my love to mere

[y0] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

whoremongering with that accursed five guineas! I will be thy vassal; I
will fly with thee down the coasts of earth; I will deliver soul and body into
thy hands for very love; but I will not take thee for my whore while breath
is in me!"

"Ah, then, 'tis after all a fraud and deceit!" Joan cried, her eyes flashing.
'Te think to gull me with thee's and thy's and your prattle o' love and
chastity! I say pay me my fee, Eben Cooke, or I'll leave ye this minute for
ever and all; and 'tis many the hour ye'll curse your miserliness, when word
oft reaches my Johnny McEvoy!"

"I cannot/' Ebenezer said.

"Then know that I despise ye for a knave and fool!" Joan jumped from
the bed and snatched up her garments.

"And know that I love thee for my savior and inspiration!" Ebenezer
replied. "For ne'er till you came to me this night have I been a man,
but a mere dotting oaf and fop; and ne'er till I embraced thee have I
been a poet, but a shallow coxcomb and poetaster! With thee, Joan,
what deeds could I not accomplish! What verse not write! Nay, e'en should
you scorn me in your error and ne'er look on me more, I will love thee
nonetheless, and draw power and purpose from my love. For so strong
is't, that e'en unrequited it shall sustain and inspire me; but should God
grant thee wit to comprehend and receive it and return it as then you
would perforce, why, the world would hear such verses as have ne'er been
struck, and our love would stand as model and exemplar to all times! Scorn
me, Joan, and I shall be a splendid fool, a Don Quixote tilting for his
ignorant Dulcinea; but I here challenge thee— if you've life and fire and
wit enough, love me truly as I love thee, and then shall I joust with bona
fide giants and bring them low! Love me, and I swear to thee this: I shall
be Poet Laureate of England!"

"Methinks thou'rt a Bedlamite already," Joan snapped, hooking up her
dress. "As for my ignorance, I had rather be fool than scoundrel, and yet
rather scoundrel than madman, and in sooth I believe thou'rt all three in
one skin. Mayhap I'm dolt enough not to grasp this grand passion ye make
such claim to, but I've mother wit enough to see when I'm hoaxed and
cheated. My John shall hear oft."

"Ah Joan, Joan!" Ebenezer pleaded. "Are you then indeed unworthy?
For I declare to thee solemnly: no man will e'er offer thee another such
love."

"Do but offer me my rightful fee, and I'll say not a word to John: the
rest o' your offer ye may put back in your hat."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ Jl ]

"So," sighed Ebenezer, still transported, "you are unworthy! So be't, ift
must: I love thee no less for't, or for the sufferings I shall welcome in
thy name!"

"May ye suffer French pox, ye great ass!" Joan replied, and left the room
in a heat.

Ebenezer scarcely noted her departure, so full was he of his love; he
strode feverishly about the bedchamber, hands clasped behind his back,
pondering the depth and force of his new feeling. "Am I waked to the
world from a thirty-year sleep?" he asked himself. "Or is't only now I've
begun to dream? Surely none awake e'er felt such dizzy power, nor any
man in dreams such bursting life! Hi! A song!"

He ran to his writing-desk, snatched up his quill, and with little ado
penned the following song:

Not Priam for the ravagd Town of Troy,

Andromache for her bouncing Baby Boy,
Ulysses for his chaste Penelope,

Bare the Love, dear Joan, I bear for Theel

But as cold Semele pritfd Endymion,

And Phaedra sweet Hippolytus her Step-Son,

He being Virgin — so, I pray may Ye

Whom I love, love my stainless Chastity.

For 'tis no niggard Gift, my Innocence,

But one that, giv'n, defieth Recompense;
No common Jewel pluck' d from glist'ring Hoard,

But one that, taken, ne'er can be restored.

Preserv'd, my Innocence preserveth Me

From Life, from Time, from Death, from History;

Without it I must breathe Man's mortal Breath:

Commence a Life — and thus commence my Death!

When he was done composing he wrote at the bottom of the page
Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet and Laureate of England, just to try the
look of it, and, regarding it, was pleased.

" Tis now but a question of time," he rejoiced. "Faith, 'tis a rare wise
man knows who he is: had I not stood firm with Joan Toast, I might well
ne'er have discovered that knowledge! Did I, then, make a choice? Nay,
for there was no I to make it! 'Twas the choice made me: a noble choice,
to prize my love o'er my lust, and a noble choice bespeaks a noble chooser.
What am I? What am I? Virgin, sir! Poet, sir! I am a virgin and a poet; less

[ 72 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

than mortal and more; not a man, but Mankind! I shall regard my innocence
as badge of my strength and proof of my calling: let her who's worthy oft
take it from me!"

Just then the servant Bertrand tapped softly on the door and entered,
candle in hand, before Ebenezer had a chance to speak.

"Should I retire now, sir?" he asked, and added with an enormous wink,
"Or will there be more visitors?"

Ebenezer blushed. "Nay,, nay, go to bed."

'Very good, sir. Pleasant dreams."

"How's that?"

But Bertrand, with another great wink, closed the door.

"Really," Ebenezer thought, "the fellow is presumptuous!" He returned
to the poem and reread it several times with a frown.

"Tis a gem," he admitted, "but there wants some final touch, . , ?

He scrutinized it line for line; at Bare the Love, dear Joan, 1 bear for
Thee he paused, furrowed his great brow, pursed his lips, squinted his eye%
tapped his foot, and scratched his chin with the feather of his quill.

"Hm," he said.

After some thought, he inked his quill $nd struck out Joan, setting in its
place the word Heart. Then he reread the whole poem.

" 'Twas the master touch!" he (declared with satisfaction. "The piece is
perfect."

8: A COLLOQUY BETWEEN MEN OF PRINCIPLE, AND
WHAT CAME OF IT

WHEN HE HAD DONE REVISING HIS POEM EBENEZER t*AID IT ON HIS

night table, undressed, went to bed, and presently resumed the sleep that
Joan Toast's visit had interrupted, for the day's events had quite fatigued
him. But again his sleep was fitful— this time it was excitement and not
despair that bothered him— and, as before, it was short-lived: he had been
beneath his quilts no more than an hour before he was waked once again
by a loud knocking at the door, which he'd forgot to latch after Joan's
departure.

"Who is't?" he called. "Bertrand! Someone's knocking!"

Before he could make a light, or even get up from the bed* the door

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [73]

was opened roughly, and John McEvoy, lantern in hand, strode into the
room. He stood beside the bed and held the light close to Ebenezer's face.
Bertrand, apparently, was asleep, for to Ebenezer's slight distress he failed
to appear.

"My five guineas, if ye please," McEvoy demanded calmly, holding out
his other hand.

Ebenezer broke at once into a mighty sweat, but he contrived to ask
hoarsely, from the bed, "How is't I owe you money? I cannot recall buying
aught of you."

"Ye do but prove your ignorance of the world," declared McEvoy, "for
the first principle o' harlotry is, that what a man buys of a whore is not so-
much her bum but her will and her time; when ye hire my Joan 'tis neither
her affair nor mine what use ye make o' her, so long as ye pay yer fee. As't
happens, ye chose to talk in lieu of swiving; 'twas a fool's choice, but 'tis
your privilege to play the fool if t please ye. Now, sir, my five guineas!"

"Ah, my friend," said Ebenezer, reminding himself grimly of his identity,
"'tis only fair to tell you, if haply Joan did not: I love her wondrously!"

" 'Tis all one, so ye pay your fee," replied McEvoy.

"That I cannot," Ebenezer said. "Your own reasoning in the matter
rules it out. For if 'tis true,, as you declare, that 'tis the rental of her will
and time that makes a woman whore, then to pay you for what of her
time she spent here would make her my whore though I did not touch her
carnally. And make her my whore I will not— nay, not were I racked for't!
I bear you no ill will, John McEvoy, nor must you think me miserly: I've
gold enough, and no fear of parting with it."

"Then pay your fee," said McEvoy.

"My dear man," Ebenezer smiled, "will you not take five— nay, six
guineas from me as an outright gift?"

"Five guineas, as a fee," repeated McEvoy.

"Where's the difference to you, should I call the sum a gift and not a
payment? 'Twill fetch no less in the market, I pledge you!"

"If't makes no difference," replied McEvoy, "then call it the fee for Joan
Toast's whoring."

"Think not it makes no difference to me" Ebenezer said. "To me 'tis
all the difference! No man makes a whore of the woman he loves, and I
love Joan Toast as never man loved woman."

"Out on't!" McEvoy scoffed. "Everything ye say proves ye know naught
whatever concerning love. Think not ye love Joan Toast, Mr. Cooke: 'tis
your love ye love, and that's but to say 'tis yourself and not my Joan. But no

[ 74 I 1™ SOT-WEED FACTOR

matter— love her or swive her, so ye pay your fee. To no man save myself
may she be aught but whore; I am a jealous man, sir, and though ye may
purchase my Joan's will and time as client, ye mayn't court it as lover."

"'Sbody, 'tis a passing odd jealousy, I swear't!" Ebenezer exclaimed.
"I ne'er have heard its like!"

"Which is to say, ye know naught o' love," said McEvoy.

Ebenezer shook his head and declared, "I cannot grasp it* Great heavens,,
man, this divine creature, this vision of all that's fair in womankind, this
Joan Toast— she is your mistress! How is't you can allow men e'en to lay
their eyes upon her, much less "

"Much less much more? How clear it is ye love yourself and not Joan!
There's naught o' the divine in Joan, my friend. She's mortal clay and
hath her share o' failings like the rest of us. As for this vision ye speak of,
'tis the vision ye love, not the woman. 'Twere impossible it could be other-
wise, for none o' ye save I e'en knows the woman."

"And yet you play her pimp!"

McEvoy laughed. "I shall tell ye a thing about yourself, Eben Cooke,
and haply ye'll recall it now and again: 'tis not simply love ye know naught
of, 'tis the entire great red worldl Your senses fail ye; your busy fancy plays
ye false and fills your head with foolish pictures. Things are not as ye see
'em, friend— the world's a tangled skein, and all is knottier than ye take it
for. You understand naught o' life: I shan't say more." He drew a document
from his pocket and gave it to Ebenezer. "Read it with haste and pay your
fee.

Ebenezer unfolded the paper and read it with mounting consternation.
It was headed To Andrew Cooke, 2nd, Gent, and commenced thus:

My dear Sir,

It is my unhappy duty to bring to your notice certain regrettable matters con-
cerning the behavior of your Son Ebenezer Cooke. . . .

The note went on to declare that Ebenezer was spending his days and
nights in the wine- and coffee-houses and the theaters, drinking, whoring,
and writing doggerel, and that he was making no effort whatever to find an
instructive post for himself as he had been directed. It concluded:

I bring this lamentable state of affairs to your attention, not alone because
it is your right as young Cooke's Father to know them, but also because
the young man in question hath added to his other vices, that of luring young
women into his bedchamber on promise of generous remuneration, only to
default on payment afterwards.

As agent for one such defrauded young lady, I find myself Mr. Cooke's creditor

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 75 ]

in the amount of five guineas, which debt he refuses to honor despite the most
reasonable pleas. I feel certain that, as the Gentleman's father, you will be
interested in the settlement of this debt either directly, by forwarding me the
young lady's fee, or indirectly, by persuading your son to settle it before the
matter receives a more general notoriety. Waiting for communication from
you upon the business, I am, sir,

yr Hmble & Ow Svt,
John McEvoy

"'Sblood, 'tis my mini" Ebenezer murmured, when he had read it
through.

"Aye, if posted," agreed McEvoy. "Do but pay your fee, and 'tis yours
to destroy. Else I mean to post it at once."

Ebenezer closed his eyes and sighed.

"Doth the thing so much matter to ye?" smiled McEvoy.

"Aye. And doth it to you?"

"Aye. It must be whore-money."

Ebenezer caught sight of his poem in the lantern-light. His features
commenced their customary dance,, and then, calming, he turned to face
McEvoy.

"It cannot be," he said. "That is my final word on't. Post thy tattling
letter if you will."

"I shall," declared McEvoy, and rose to leave.

"And append this to't, if you've a mind to," Ebenezer added. Tearing
off the signature Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., Poet & Laureate of England, he
handed McEvoy the poem.

"Such bravery," smiled his visitor, scanning it. "What is this? And
Phaedra sweet Hippolytus her Step-Son? Ye rhyme Endymion and Step-
Son?"

Ebenezer paid his critic no heed. "Twill at least belie your charge that
I write doggerel," he said.

"Endymion and Step-Son" McEvoy repeated, mating a face. "Belie't,
ye say? Marry,, sir, 'twill confirm it past question! Were I in your boots I'd
pay my whore-money and consign letter, Endymion, Step-Son, and all to
the fire." He returned the poem to Ebenezer. "Will ye not reconsider?"

"Nay."

"Ye'll go to Maryland for a whore?"

"I'd not cross the street for a whore," Ebenezer said firmly, ^ut I shall
cross the ocean for a principle! To you, haply, Joan Toast is a whore; to me
she is a principle."

[ y6 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"To me she is a woman," replied McEvoy. "To you she's a hallucination."

"What manner of artist are you," scorned Ebenezer, "that cannot see
the monstrous love which fires me?"

"What manner of artist you," retorted McEvoy, "that can't see through
it? And are ye in sooth a virgin, as Joan Toast swears?"

"And a poet," Ebenezer declared with new serenity. "Now begone, an't
please you. Do your worst!"

McEvoy scratched his nose in amusement. "I will," he promised, and
went out, leaving his host in total darkness.

Ebenezer had remained in bed throughout the conversation, for at least
three reasons: first, he had retired after Joan Toast's departure clothed in no
warmer nightshirt than his own fair skin, and, not so much from prudishness
as from shyness, he was reluctant to expose himself before another man,
even his valet, though not always (as shall be seen) before a woman; second,
even had this not been the case, McEvoy had given him little opportunity
to get up; and third, it was Ebenezer's ill fortune to be endowed with a
nervous system and a rational faculty that operated as independently of
each other as two Londoners of wholly various temperament who chance
to inhabit the same rooming house, but go blithely each his separate way
without thought of his neighbor: no matter how firm his resolve, as regards
both Joan Toast and his new-found essences, any strong emotion tended
to soak him with sweat, to rob him of muscle if not voice, and to make
him sick. Given both the determination and the opportunity, he still could
scarcely have accomplished sitting up.

His bedclothes were wet with perspiration; his stomach churned. When
McEvoy was gone he sprang out of bed to latch the door against further
visitors, but immediately upon standing erect was overcome by nausea and
had to run for the commode across the room. As soon as he was able he
slipped into his nightshirt and called for Bertrand, who this time appeared
almost at once, wigless and gowned. In one hand he held a bare wax candle,
in the other its heavy pewter holder,

"The fellow is gone," Ebenezer said. " Tis safe to show thyself." Still
weak in the knees, he sat at his writing-desk and held his head in his hands.

"Lucky for hjlm he held his temperl" Bertrand said grimly, brandishing
his candleholder.

Ebenezer smiled. "Was't thy intent to rap on the wall for silence if he
didn't?"

"On his arrogant pate, sir! I stood just without your door the entire

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [77]

while, for fear he'd leap you, and only jumped inside my room when he
left, for fear he'd spy me."

"For fear in sooth! Did you not hear my call?"

"I own I did not, sir, and beg your pardon for't. Had he knocked below
like any gentleman, he'd ne'er have got by me on that errand, I swear! Twas
your voices waked me, and when I caught the drift of your talk I dared not
intrude for fear of presuming, or leave for fear he'd assault you/'

"Marry, Bertrand!" Ebenezer said. "Thou'rt the very model of a servant!
You heard all, then?"

" Twas farthest from my mind to eavesdrop," Bertrand protested, '"but
I could scarce avoid the substance oft. What a cheat and blackguard the
pimp is, to ask five guinea for a tart you spent not two hours with! For five
guinea I could fill thy bed with trollops!"

"Nay, 'tis no cheat; McEvoy is as honest a man as I. Twas a collision of
principles, not a haggle over price." He went to fetch a robe. "Will you
make up the fire, Bertrand, and brew tea for both of us? I've small hope of
sleep this night,"

Bertrand lit the lamp from his candle, put fresh wood in the fireplace,
and blew up the embers in the grate.

"How can the wretch harm you?" he asked. " Tis unlikely a pimp could
press a law-suit!"

"He hath no need of the courts. Tis but a matter of telling my father of
the affair, and off I go to Maryland."

"For a simple business with a strumpet, sir? Marry, thou'rt not a child,
nor Master Andrew any cleric! I beg your pardon for't, sir, but your home-
place is no popish convent, if I may say so! There's much goes on there
that Miss Anna and yourself know naught of, nor old Twigg, either, for all
her sniffs and snoops."

Ebenezer frowned. "How's that? What in Heav'n do you mean, fellow?"
* "Nay, nay, spare your anger; marry, I yield to none in respect for your
father, sir! I meant naught by't at all, save that Master Andrew is a natural
man, if you follow me, like thee and me; a lusty fellow despite his age, and
—no disrespect intended— he's long a widower. A servant sees things now
and again, sir."

"A servant sees little and fancies much," Ebenezer said sharply. "Is't
your suggestion my father's a whoremonger?"

" 'Sblood, sir, nothing of the sort! He's a great man and an honest, is
Master Andrew, and I pride myself on having his confidence these many
years. Tis no accident he chose me to come to London with you, sir: I've

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

managed business of some consequence for him ere now that Mrs. Twigg
for all her haughty airs knew naught of/'

"See here, Bertrand," Ebenezer demanded with interest, "are you saying
you've been my father's pimp?"

"I'll speak no more oft, sir, an it please thee, for it seems thou'rt out of
sorts and put an ill construction on my words. All I meant to say in the
world was that were I in thy place I'd not pay a farthing for all the
scoundrel's letters to your father. The man who says he ne'er hath bought
a swiving must needs be either fairy or castrato, if he be not a liar, and
Master Andrew's none o' the three. Let the rascal say 'tis a vice with thee;
I'll swear on oath 'twas the first you've been a-whoring, to my knowledge.
No disgrace in that/' He gave Ebenezer a cup of tea and stood by the fire
to drink his own.

"Perhaps not, even if 'twere true."

"I'm certain oft," Bertrand said, gaining confidence. "You had your tart
as any man might, and there's an end on't Her pimp asked more than her
worth, and so you sent him packing. I'd advise thee to pay him not a
farthing for all his trumpeting, and Master Andrew would agree with me."

"Belike you misheard me through the door, Bertrand/' Ebenezer said.
"I did not swive the girl."

Bertrand smiled. "Ah, now, 'twas a clever enough stand to take with the
pimp, considering he roused you up ere you'd time to think; but 'twill ne'er
fool Master Andrew for a minute/'

"Nay, 'tis the simple truth! And e'en had I done so I would not pay him
a ha'penny for't. I love the girl and shan't buy her for a harlot/'

<0"N°W' that one hath the touch of greatness in it/' Bertrand declared
"Tis worthy of the cleverest blade in London! But speaking as your
adviser - "

"My adviser! Thou'rt my adviser?"

Bertrand shifted uneasily. "Aye, sir, in a manner of speaking, you under-
stand. As I said before, I pride myself that your father trusts me _ "

"Did Father send you to me as a governess? Do you report my doings
to him?"

t "Nay, nay!" Bertrand said soothingly. "I only meant, as I said before,
tas clearly no accident he named me and no other to attend ye, sir. I pride
myself 'tis a sign of his faith in my judgment. I merely meant 'twas clever
to tell the punp thou'rt in love with his tart and shan't cheapen her; but
it ye repeat the tale to Master Andrew 'twere wise to make clear 'twas but
a gambit, so as not to alarm him."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR t 79 1

"You don't believe it? Nor that I am a virgin?"

"Thou'rt a great tease, sir! I only question whether thy father would
understand raillery."

"I see thou'rt not to be convinced," Ebenezer said, shaking his head.
"No matter, I suppose. Tis not the business of five guineas will undo me
anyhow, but the other."

"Another? Marry, what a rascal!"

"Nay, not another wench; another business. Haply 'twill interest you, as
my adviser: McEvoy's tattling letter describes my place at Peter Paggen's,
that hath not improved these five years."

Bertrand set down his cup. "My dear sir, pay him his rascally guineas."

Ebenezer smiled. "What? Permit the wretch to overcharge me?"

"I've two guinea laid by, sir, in a button box in my chest. 'Tis thine
toward the debt. Only let me run to pay him, ere he posts his foul letter."

"Thy charity gladdens me,, Bertrand, and thy concern, but the principle
is the same. I shan't pay it."

"Marry, sir, then I must off to a Jew for the other three and pay it myself,
though he hold liver and lights for collateral. Master Andrew will have my
head!"

" Twill avail thee naught. Tis not five guineas McEvoy wants, but five
guineas from my hand as whore-money."

"I'faith, then I'm lost!"

"How so?"

"When Master Andrew learns how ill ye've minded his direction he'll
sack me for certain, to punish ye. What comfort hath the adviser? If things
go well 'tis the student gets the praise; if ill, 'tis the adviser gets the blame/'

"Tis in sooth a thankless office," Ebenezer said sympathetically. He
yawned and stretched. "Let us sleep out the balance of the night, now. Thy
conversation is a marvelous soporific."

Bertrand showed no sign of understanding the remark, but he rose to
leave.

"You'll see me sacked, then, ere you pay the debt?"

"I doubt me such a priceless adviser will be sacked," Ebenezer replied.
"Belike he'll send thee off with me to Maryland, to advise me."

"Gramercy, sir! Thou'rt jesting!"

"Not at all."

" 'Sheart! To perish at the hands of salvages!"

"Ah, as for that, two of us can fight 'em better than one. Good night,
now." So saying, he sent Bertrand terrified to his room and attempted, by

[ 80 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

a childish habit he had of rolling from side to side in his bed, to lull himself
to sleep. But his fancy was too much occupied with versions of the imminent
confrontation of his father and himself—versions the details of which he
altered and perfected with an artist's dispassionate care— to allow him more
than a restless somnolence.

As it turned out, there was no confrontation at all, though St. Giles
was but an easy carriage ride from where he lived. On the evening of the
second day after McEvoy's threat, a messenger came to Ebenezer's room
(from which, having abandoned Peter Paggen entirely, he had scarcely
ventured in two days) with twelve pounds in cash and a brief letter from
Andrew:

My Son: It is truly said, that Children are a certain Care, and but an uncertain
Comfort. Suffice it to say, I have learned of your vicious Condition; I shall not
sully myself by witnessing it firsthand. You shall on Pain of total and entire
Disinheritance and Disownment take Ship for Maryland on the Bark Poseidon,
sailing from Plimouth for Piscataway on April i, there to proceed straightway
to Cookes poynt and assume Managership of Maiden. It is my intention to
make a final Sojourn in the Plantations perhaps a Year hence, and I pray that
at that Time I shall find a prosperous Maiden and a regenerate Son: an Estate
worth bequeathing and an Heir worth the Bequest. It is your final Chance.

Your Father

Ebenezer was more numbed than stunned by the letter, for he'd antic-
ipated some such ultimatum.

"Marry, 'tis but a week hence!'7 he reflected with alarm. The notion
of leaving his companions just when, having determined his essence, he
felt prepared to begin enjoying them, distressed him quite; whatever fugitive
attraction the colonies had held for him fled before the prospect of actually
going there.

He showed the letter to Bertrand.

"Ah, 'tis as I thought: thy principles have undone me, I see no summons
here to my old post in St. Giles,"

"Haply 'twill come yet, Bertrand, by another messenger/'

But the servant appeared unconsoled, TfaithI Back to old Twigg! I had
almost rather brave the salvage Indians."

"I would not see thee suffer on my account," Ebenezer declared, "I
shall pay your April's wages, and you may start today to seek another post"

The valet seemed scarcely able to believe such generosity, "Bless ye, sir!
Thou'rt every inch a gentlemanl"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 8l ]

Ebenezer dismissed him and returned to his own problem. What was
he to do? During most of that day he anxiously examined various faces of
himself in his looking glass; during most of the next he composed stanzas
to Gloom and Melancholy, after the manner of II Penseroso (though
briefer and, he decided, of a different order of impact); the third he
spent abed, getting up only to feed and relieve himself. He refused
Bertrand's occasional proffered services. A change came over him: his beard
went unshaved, his drawers unchanged, his feet unwashed. How take ship
for the wild untutored colonies, now he knew himself a poet and was ready
to fire London with his art? And yet how make shift unaided in London,
penniless, in defiance of his father and at the expense of his inheritance?

"What am I to do?" he asked himself, lying unkempt in his bed on the
fourth day. It was a misty March morning, though a warm and sunny one,
and the glaring haze from outside caused his head to ache. The bedclothes
were no longer clean, nor was his nightshirt. His late fire was ashed and
cold. Eight o'clock passed, and nine, but he could not resolve to get up.
Once only, as a mere experiment, he held his breath in order to try
whether he could make himself die, for he saw no alternative; but after
a half minute he drew air frantically and did not try again. His stomach
rumbled, and his sphincters signaled their discomfort. He could think of
no reason for rising from the bed, nor any for remaining there. Ten o'clock
came and went.

Near noon, running his eyes about the room for the hundredth time
that morning, he caught sight of something that had previously escaped
him: a scrap of paper on the floor beside his writing-desk. Recognizing it,
he climbed out of bed without thinking, fetched it up, and squinted at
it in the glare,

Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., "Poet & Laureate. . . ;

The rest of the epithet was torn off, but despite its loss, or perhaps be-
cause of it, Ebenezer was suddenly inspired with such a pleasant resolve
that his spirits rose on the instant, driving three days' gloom before them
as a March breeze drives away squalls. His spine thrilled; his face flushed.
Lighting on a piece of letter paper, he addressed a salutation directly to
Charles Calvert, Third Lord Baltimore and Second Lord Proprietary of
the Province of Maryland. Your Excellency, he wrote, with the same sure
hand of some nights before:

It is my Intention to take Ship for Maryland upon the Bark Poseidon a few
Days hence, for the Purpose of managing my Father's Property, called Cooke' s
Point, in Dorchester. Yr LdshP will do me a great Honour, and Himself no

[ 82 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

ill Turn it may be, by granting me an Audience before I embark, in order that
I might discuss certain Plans of mine, such that I venture will not altogether
displease Yr LdsllP, and in order farther that I might learn, from Him most
qualified to say, where in the Province to seek the congenial Company of
Men of Breeding and Refinement, with whom to share my leisure Hours in
those most civiliz'd Pursuits of Poetry, Music and Conversation, without which
Life were a Salvag'ry, and scarce endurable. Respectfully therefore awaiting
Yr LdshP« Reply, I am,

Yr Most HmWe & Obt Svt,
Ebenezer Cooke

And after but a moment's deliberation he appended boldly to his name
the single word Poet, deeming it a pointless modesty to deny or conceal
his very essence.

"By Heav'n!" he exclaimed to himself, looking back on his recent
doldrums. "I had near slipped once again into the Abyss! Methinks 'tis a
peril I am prone to: 'tis my Nemesis, and marks me off from other men
as did the Furies poor Orestes! So be't: at least I know my dread Erinyes
for what they are and will henceforth mark their approach betimes. What
is more— thank Joan Toast!— I now know how to shield myself from their
assault/' He consulted his mirror and after some false starts, reflected this
reflection: "Life! I must fling myself into Life, escape to't, as Orestes to
the temple of Apollo. Action be my sanctuary; Initiative my shield! I shall
smite ere I am smitten; clutch Life by his horns! Patron of poets, thy
temple be the Entire Great Real World, whereto I run with arms a-stretch:
may't guard me from the Pit, and may my Erinyes sink 'neath the vertigo
I flee to be transformed to mild Eumenides!"

He then reread his letter.

"Aye," he said, "read and rejoice, Baltimore! Tis not every day your
province is blessed with a poet. But faith! Tis already the twenty-seventh
of the month! I must deliver't in person at once."

Tius resolved, Ebenezer called for Bertrand and, finding him not at
home, doffed his malodorous nightshirt and proceeded to dress himself.
Not bothering to trouble his skin with water, he slipped on his best linen
drawers, short ones without stirrups, heavily perfumed, and a clean white
day-shirt of good frieze holland, voluminous and soft, with a narrow neck-
band, full sleeves caught at the wrists with black satin ribbon, and small,
modestly frilled cuifs. Next he pulled on a pair of untrimmed black velvet
knee breeches, close in the thighs and full in the seat, and then his knitted
white silk hose, which, following the very latest fashion, he left rolled above
the knee in order to display the black ribbon garters that held them up.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 83 ]

On then with his shoes, a fortnight old, of softest black Spanish leather,
square-toed, high-heeled, and buckled, their cupid-bow tongues turned
down to flash a fetching red lining. Respectful of both the warmth and
the fashion of the day, he left his waistcoat where it hung and donned
next a coat of plum-colored serge lined with silver-gray prunella— the great
cuffs turned back to show alternate stripes of plum and silver— collarless,
tight-shouldered, and full-skirted, which he left unbuttoned from neck to
hem to show off shirt and cravat. This latter was of white muslin, the long
pendant ends finished in lace, and Ebenezer tied it loosely, twisted the
pendants ropewise, and fetched up the ends to pass through the top left
buttonhole of his open coat, Steinkirk fashion. Then came his short-sword
in its beribboned scabbard, slung low on his left leg from a well-tooled belt,
and after it his long, tight-curled white periwig, which he powdered gener-
ously and fitted with care on his pate, in its natural state hairless as an egg.
Nothing now remained but to top the periwig with his round-crowned,
broad-brimmed, feather-edged black beaver, draw on his gauntlet gloves of
fawn leather stitched in gold and silver (the cuffs edged in white lace
and lined with yellow silk), fetch up his long cane (looped with plum-
and-white ribbons like those on his scabbard), and behold the finished
product in his looking glass.

" 'Sbodikins!" he cried for very joy. "What a rascal! En garde, London!
Look lively, Life! Have at ye!"

But there was little time to admire the spectacle: Ebenezer hurried out
to the street, hired himself the services of barber and bootblack, ate a hearty
meal, and took hack at once for the London house of Charles Calvert,
Lord Baltimore.

9: EBENEZER'S AUDIENCE WITH LORD BALTIMORE,
AND HIS INGENIOUS PROPOSAL TO THAT GENTLEMAN

TO HIS EXTREME DELIGHT AND CONSIDERABLE SURPRISE, IN A MATTER

of minutes after Ebenezer had presented himself at Lord Baltimore's town
house and had sent his message in by a house-servant, word was sent back
to him that Charles would receive the visitor in his library, and Ebenezer
was ushered not long afterwards into the great man's presence.
Lord Baltimore was seated in an enormous leather chair beside the hearth,

[ 84 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and, though he did not rise to greet his visitor, he motioned cordially for
Ebenezer to take the chair opposite him. He was an old man, rather small-
framed and tight-skinned despite his age, with a prominent nose, a thin
white mustache, and large, unusually bright brown eyes; he looked, it oc-
curred to Ebenezer, like an aged and ennobled Henry Burlingame. He
was dressed more formally and expensively than Ebenezer, but— as the latter
observed at once— not so fashionably: in fact, some ten years behind the
times. His wig was a campaigner, full but not extremely long, its tight curls
terminating before either shoulder in pendulous corkscrewed dildos; his
cravat was of loosely-tied, lace-edged linen; his coat was rose brocade lined
with white alamode, looser in the waist and shorter in the skirt than was
the current preference, and the unflapped pockets were cut horizontally
rather than vertically and set low to the hem. The sleeves reached nearly
to the wrists, returned a few inches to show their white linings stitched in
silver, and opened at the back with rounded hound's-ear corners. The
side vents, cut hip high, were edged with silver buttons and sham button-
holes, and the right shoulder boasted a knot of looped silver ribbons. Be-
neath the coat were a waistcoat of indigo armozine, which he wore com-
pletely buttoned, and silk breeches to match: one saw no more of his
shirt than the dainty cuffs of white cobweb lawn. What is more, his garters
were hidden under the roll of his hose, and the tongues of his shoes were
high and square. He held Ebenezer's letter in his hand and squinted at
it in the dim light from the heavily-curtained windows as though re-exam-
ining its contents.

"Ebenezer Cooke, is't?" he said by way of commencing the conversa-
tion. "Of Cooke's Point, in Dorchester?" His voice, while still in essence
forceful, had that uncertain flutter which betrays the onset of senility.
Ebenezer bowed slightly in acknowledgment and took the chair indicated
by his host.

"Andrew Cooke's son?" asked Charles, peering at his guest.

"The same, sir," Ebenezer replied,

"I knew Andrew Cooke in Maryland," reflected Charles. "If memory
serves me rightly, 'twas in 1661, the year my father made me Governor of
the Province, that I licensed Andrew Cooke to trade there. But I've not
seen him for many years and haply wouldn't know him now, or he me."
He sighed. "Life's a battle that scars us all, victor and vanquished alike."

"Aye," Ebenezer agreed readily, "but 'tis the stuff of living to fight it,
and take't by storm, and your good soldier wears his scars with pride, win
or lose, so he got 'em bravely in honest combat."

"I doubt not," murmured Charles, and retreated to the letter. "How's

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 85 ]

this, now/' he remarked: "Ebenezer Cooke, Poet. What might that mean,
pray? Can it be you earn your bread by versifying? Or you're a kind of
minstrel, belike, that wanders about the countryside a-begging and recit-
ing? Tis a trade I know little of, I confess't"

"Poet I am," answered Ebenezer with a blush, "and no mean one it
may be; but not a penny have I earned by't, nor will I ever. The muse
loves him who courts her for herself alone, and scorns the man who'd pimp
her for his purse's sake."

"I daresay, I daresay," said Charles. "But is-t not customary, when a man
tack some bunting to his name to wave like a pendant in the public breeze,
that he show thereby his calling and advertise it to the world? Now, did
I read here Ebenezer Cooke, Tinker, I'd likely hire you to patch my pots;
if Ebenezer Cooke, Physician, I'd send you the rounds of my household,
to purge and tonic the lot; if Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman, br Esquire, I'd
presume you not for hire,, and ring in my man to fetch you brandy. But
Poet, now: Ebenezer Cooke, Poet. What trade is that? How doth one deal
with you? What work doth one put you to?"

" Tis that very matter I wish to speak of," said Ebenezer, unruffled by
the twitting. "Know, sir, that though 'tis no man's living to woo the muse,
'tis yet some men's calling, and so 'twas not recklessly I tacked on my name
the title Poet: 'tis of no moment what I do; poet is what I am."

"As another might sign himself Gentleman?" asked Charles.

"Precisely."

"Then 'tis not for hire you sought me out? You crave no employment?*

"Hire I do not seek," Ebenezer declared. "For as the lover craves of his
beloved naught save her favor, which to him is reward sufficient, so craves
the poet no more from his muse than happy inspiration; and as the fruit
of lover's labor is a bedded bride, and the sign oft a crimsoned sheet, so
the poet's prize is a well-turned verse, and the sign thereof a printed page.
To be sure, if haply the lass bring with her some dowry, 'twill not be scorned,
nor will what pence come poetwards from, his publishing. Howbeit, these
are mere accidents, happy but unsought."

"Why, then," said Charles, fetching two pipes from a rack over the fire-
place, "I believe we may call't established that you are not for hire. Let's
have a pipe on't, and then pray state your business."

The two men filled and lit their pipes, and Ebenezer returned to his
theme.

"Hire I care naught for," he repeated, "but as for employment, there's
another matter quite, and the very sum and substance of my visit. You
enquired a moment past, What trade is the poet's, and to what work

[86] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

shall he be put? For answer let me ask you, sir, by'r leave— would the world
at large know aught of Agamemnon, or fierce Achilles, or crafty Odysseus,
or the cuckold Menelaus, or that entire circus of strutting Greeks and
Trojans, had not great Homer rendered 'em to verse? How many battles
of greater import are lost in the dust of history, d'you think, for want of
a poet to sing 'em to the ages? Full many a Helen blooms one spring and
goes to the worm forgot; but let a Homer paint her in the grand cosmetic
of his verse, and her beauty boils the blood of twenty centuries! Where lies
a Prince's greatness, I ask you? In his feats on the field of battle, or the
downy field of love? Why, 'tis but a generation's work to forget 'em for
good and all! Nay, I say 'tis not in the deeds his greatness lies, but in
their telling. And who's to tell 'em? Not the historian, for be he ne'er so
dev'lish accurate, as to how many hoplites had Epaminondas when he
whipped the Spartans at Leuctra, or what was the Christian name of
Charlemagne's barber, yet nobody reads him but his fellow chroniclers and
his students— the one from envy, t'other from necessity. But place deeds
and doer in the poet's hands, and what comes oft? Lo, the crook'd nose
grows straight, the lean shank fleshes out, French pox becomes a bedsore;
shady deeds shed their tarnish, bright grow brighter; and the whole is
musicked into tuneful rhyme, arresting conceit, and stirring meter, so's to
stick in the head like Greensleeves and move the heart like Scripture!"

"Tis clear as day," said Charles with a smile, "that the poet is a useful
member of a Prince's train."

"And what's true for a prince is true for a principality," Ebenezer went
on, stirred by his own eloquence. "What were Greece without Homer,
Rome without Virgil, to sing their glories? Heroes die, statues break, em-
pires crumble; but your Iliad laughs at time, and a verse from Virgil still
rings true as the day 'twas struck. Who renders virtue palatable like the poet,
and vice abhorrent, seeing he alone provides both precept and example?
Who else bends nature to suit his fancy and paints men better or worse
to suit his purpose? What sings like lyric, praises like panegyric, mourns
like elegiac, wounds like Hudibrastic verse?"

"Naught, that I can name," said Charles, "and you have quite persuaded
me that a man's most useful friend and fearsome foe is the poet. Prithee
now, fellow, dispense with farther preamble and deliver me your business
plainly/'

"Very well," said Ebenezer, planting his cane between his knees and
gripping its handle firmly. "Would you say, sir, that Maryland boasts a sur-
feit of poets?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 87 ]

"A surfeit of poets?" repeated Charles, and drew thoughtfully upon his
pipe. "Well, now, since you ask, I think not. Nay, in good faith I must
confess, entre nous, there is no surfeit of poets in Maryland. Not a bit oft.
Why, Fd wager one might walk the length and breadth of St. Mary's City
on a May afternoon and not cross the tracks of a single poet, they're that
rare."

"As I reckoned/' said Ebenezer. "Would you go so far as to suppose,
even, that I might be hard put to't, once I establish myself in Maryland,
to find me four or five fellow-planters to match a couplet with, or trade
a rhyme?"

" Tis not impossible," admitted Charles.

"I guessed as much. And now, sir, if I might: would't be mere gross
presumption and vanity for me to suppose, that haply I shall be the ab-
solute first, premier, unprecedented, and genuine original poet to set foot
on the soil of Terra Marine? First to pay court to the Maryland Muse?"

" 'Tis not in me to deny," replied Charles, "that should there breathe
such a wench as this Maryland Muse, you may well have her maidenhead."

"Faith!" cried Ebenezer joyously. "Only think on't! A province, an en-
tire people— all unsung! What deeds forgot, what gallant men and women
lost to time! 'Sblood, it dizzies me! Trees felled, towns raised, a very nation
planted in the wilds! Foundings, strugglings, triumphs! Why, 'tis work for
a Virgil! Think, m'lord, only think on't: the noble house of Calvert, the
Barons Baltimore— builders of nations, bringers of light, fructifiers of the
wilderness! A glorious house and history still unmusicked for the world's
delight! Marry, 'tis virgin territory!"

"Many's the fine thing to be said of Maryland," Charles agreed. "But
to speak plainly, I fear me that virgins are rare as poets there."

"Prithee do not jest!" begged Ebenezer. " 'Twere an epic such as ne'er
was penned! The Marylandiad, b'm'faith!"

"How's that?" For all his teasing manner, Charles had grown thoughtful
in the course of Ebenezer's outburst.

"The Marylandtad!" repeated Ebenezer, and declaimed as from a title-
page: "An epic to out-epic epics: the history of the princely house of Charles
Calvert, Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland,
relating the heroic founding of that province! The courage and persever-
ance of her settlers in battling barb'rous nature and fearsome salvage to
wrest a territory from the wild and transform it to an earthly paradise! The
majesty and enlightenment of her proprietors, who like kingly gardeners
fostered the tender seeds of civilization in their rude soil, and so hus-

[ 88 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

banded and cultivated them as to bring to fruit a Maryland beauteous be-
yond description; verdant, fertile, prosperous, and cultured; peopled with
brave, men and virtuous women, healthy, handsome, and refined: a Mary-
land, in short, splendid in her past, majestic in her present, and glorious
in her future^ the brightest jewel in the fair crown of England, owned and
ruled to the benefit of both by a family second to none in the recorded
history of the universal world— the whole done into heroic couplets, printed
on linen, bound in calf, stamped in gold"— here Ebenezer bowed with a
flourish of his beaver— "and dedicated to Your Lordship!"

"And signed?" asked Charles.

Ebenezer rose to his feet and beamed upon his host, one hand on his
cane and the other on his hip.

"Signed Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman," he replied: "Poet and Laureate
of the Province of Maryland!"

"Ah," said Charles. "Poet and Laureate, now: 'tis a new bit of bunting
you'd add to your name."

"Only think how 'twould redound to Your Lordship's credit," urged
Ebenezer. "The appointment would prove at a single stroke both the
authority and the grace of your rule, for 'twould give the Province the
flavor of a realm and the refinement of a court to have a bona fide laureate
sing her praises and record in verse her great moments; and as for the
Marylandiad itself, 'twould immortalize the Barons Baltimore, and make
Aeneases of 'em all! Moreover, 'twould paint the Province as she stands
today in such glowing colors as to lure the finest families of England to
settle there; 'twould spur the inhabitants to industry and virtue, to keep
the picture true as I paint it; in sum, 'twould work to the enhancement
of both the quality and the value of the colony, and so proportionately
ennoble, empower, and enrich him who owns and rules her! Is't not a
formidable string of achievements?"

At this Charles burst into such a fit of laughing that he choked on his
pipe smoke, watered at the eyes, and came near to losing his campaigner;
it required the spirited back-thumping of two body servants, who stood
nearby, to restore his composure.

"Oh dear!" he cried at last, daubing at his eyes with a handkerchief. "An
achievement indeed, to ennoble and enrich him who rules Maryland! I'm
sorry to say, Master Poet, that that fellow already maintains himself a
laureate to sing him! There's no ennobling him beyond his present station,
and as for enriching him, I venture I've done my share of that and more!
Oh dear! Oh dear!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 89 ]

"How is that?" asked Ebenezer, all bewildered.

''My good man, is't that you were born yesterday? Know you naught of
the true state o' the world?"

"Surely 'tis thy province!" exclaimed Ebenezer.

"Surely 'twas my province," corrected Charles with a wry smile, "and
the Barons Baltimore were her True and Absolute Lords Proprietary, more
often than not, from the day she was chartered till just three years ago. I
get my quit-rents yet, and a miserable bit of port revenue, but for the rest,
'tis King William's province these days, sir, and Queen Mary's, not mine.
Why not take your proposal to the Crown?"

"Marry, I knew naught oft!" said Ebenezer. "Might I ask for what cause
your Lordship retired from rule? Was't haply your desire to spend quietly
the evening of life? Or belike 'twas sheer devotion to the Crown? Egad,
what spaciousness of character!"

"Stay, stay," cried Charles, shaking again with mirth, "else I must summon
my man again to pound the lights out of me! Hey! Ha!" He sighed deeply
and beat his chest with the flat of his hand. When he had regained control
of himself he said, "I see you are all innocent of Maryland's history, and
will plunge into a place not knowing the whys and wherefores oft, or who
stands for what. You came to do me a favor, so you declare, and— by
Heav'n!— enrich and ennoble me: very well, then, permit me to do you
one in return, which will add not a farthing to your estate, but may some-
day haply save you another such wasted hour: by your leave, Mister Cooke,
I shall sketch you shortly the history of this Maryland, which,, like the gift
of a salvage, was first bestowed and then snatched back. Will you hear it?"

" 'Tis my pleasure and honor," answered Ebenezer, who, however, was
too crestfallen, after Charles's reaction to his proposal, to relish greatly a
lesson in history.

10: A BRIEF RELATION OF THE MARYLAND
PALATINATE, ITS ORIGINS AND STRUGGLES FOR
SURVIVAL, AS TOLD TO EBENEZER BY HIS HOST

" 'TIS TRULY SAID," CHARLES BEGAN, "UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS

the crown, inasmuch as Envy and covetoiLsne$s are ne'er satisfied. Mary-
land's mine by law and by right, yet her history is the tale of my family's

[90] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

struggle to preserve her, and of the plots of countless knaves to take her
from us— chief among them Black Bill Claiborne and a very antichrist
named John Coode, who plagues me yet.

"My grandfather, George Calvert, as you may know, was introduced to
the court of James I as private secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, and after
that great man's death was appointed-clerk to the Privy Council and twice
Commissioner to Ireland. He was knighted in 1617, and when Sir Thomas
Lake was sacked as Secretary of State (owing to the free tongue of his
wife), my grandfather was named to replace him, despite the fact that
the Duke of Buckingham, James's favorite, wanted the post for his friend
Carleton, the Ambassador to the Netherlands. I have cause to believe that
Buckingham took this as an affront— the more because James sent him
personally to notify Grandfather of his preferment— and became the first
significant enemy to our house.

"What an ill time to be Secretary of State! Twas in 1619, remember:
the Thirty Years' War had just commenced and was spreading all over
the continent; James had emptied our treasury; we hadn't a single strong
ally! 'Twas a choice 'twixt Spain and France, and to choose one was to
alienate the other. Buckingham favored Spain, and my grandfather sup-
ported him. What could seem wiser, I ask you? Marrying Prince Charles to
the Infanta Maria would bind Spain to us forever; Maria's dowry would
fill the treasury; and by supporting the King and Buckingham my grand-
father would prove his loyalty to the one and shame the resentment of
the other! I firmly believe, sir, that were I in his place I should have chosen
the same course. The match was unpopular, to be sure, among the Prot-
estants, and Grandfather was given the odious chore (I think at Bucking-
ham's urging) of defending it to a hostile Parliament— you can be sure
his enemies multiplied! But 'twas the part of wisdom: no man could have
guessed the treachery of King Philip and his ambassador Gondomar, who
lured us to alienate France, alienate the German Protestant princea, alien-
ate even James's son-in-law Frederick and our own House of Commons,
only to break off negotiations at the last minute and leave us virtually
helpless!"

"He was an infamous wretch, that Gondomar," Ebenezer agreed po-
litely.

"That, of course, together with his conversion to the Church of Rome,
which he announced shortly after, ended Grandfather's public career, for
he was not a man to alter course before every fickle wind of expedience,
as did Buckingham and the court, but followed honorably the dictates of

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Conscience and Reason. Despite the King's entreaties he retired from office,
and as reward for his loyalty James named him Baron of Baltimore in the
Kingdom of Ireland.

"From then till his death he devoted himself to colonizing America. In
1622 James had patented him the southeastern peninsula of Newfound-
land, and my grandfather, deceived by lying reports of the place, put a
good part of his fortune into a settlement called Avalon and went to live
there himself. But the climate was intolerable, for one thing, and det-
rimental both to crops and health. What's more, the French— with whom,
thanks to Buckingham's statesmanship, we were at war— were forever
snatching our vessels and molesting our fishermen; and as if this were not
trouble enough, certain rascally Puritan ministers spread word in the Privy
Council that Popish priests were being smuggled into Avalon to undermine
the Church of England there. At length my grandfather begged King
Charles for a grant farther south, in the dominion of Virginia. The King
wrote in reply that Grandfather should abandon his plans and return to
England, but ere the letter was received Grandfather had already removed
to Jamestown with his family and forty colonists. There he was met by
Governor Pott and his Council (including the blackguard William Clai-
borne, archenemy of Maryland, who for very spleen and treachery hath
no equal in the history of the New World), all of 'em hostile as salvages
and bent on driving Grandfather away, for fear Charles would grant him
the whole of Virginia out from under 'em. As if he were some upstart
and not late Privy Councillor to the King, they pressed him to swear the
oath of supremacy, knowing full well that as a good Catholic he would
perforce refuse. Not e'en the King had required it of him, and 'twas in
the authority of neither Pott nor Claiborne nor any other rascal in Virginia
to administer it, but demand it they did, nonetheless, and were like to set
bullies and ruffians upon him when he would not swear't."

"Inequity!" said Ebenezer.

"Iniquity!" amended Charles. "So hardly did they use him, that he was
forced to leave wife and family in Jamestown, and after exploring the
coast for awhile he returned to England and asked Charles for the Carolina
territory, south of the James River to Chowan and westward to the moun-
tains. The charter was drawn, but ere 'twas granted who should appear in
England but good Master Claiborne, who straightway commences to scheme
and intrigue against it. To avoid dispute, Grandfather nobly relinquished
Carolina and applied instead for land north of Virginia, on both sides of
the Bay of Chesapeake. Charles tried in vain to persuade him to live at

[92] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

ease in England and labor no more with grants and colonies, for that Grand-
father was by this time broken in health from the rigors of Avalon, dis-
pirited by his contests with intriguers and bigots, and well-nigh impoverished
by his failures. 'Twas e'en implied that his favor with the crown would
be increased to make up for his losses. But Grandfather would have none
of such idleness and at last prevailed upon the King to make the grant,
which he would name Crescentia, but which the King called Terra Mariae,
or Mary-Land, after Henrietta Maria, the Queen."
"Nobly done."

"A charter was writ up then, the like of which for authority and amplitude
had ne'er been composed by the Crown of England. It granted to my
grandfather all the land from the Potomac River on the south to Latitude
Forty on the north, and from the Atlantic west to the meridian of the
Potomac's first fountain. To distinguish her above all other regions in the
territory, Maryland was named a Province, a county palatine, and over it
we Barons Baltimore were made and decreed the true and absolute Lords
and Proprietaries. We had the advowsons of churches; we had authority
to enact laws and create courts-baron and courts-leet to enforce 'em; we
could punish miscreants e'en to the taking of life or member; we could

confer dignities and titles "

"Ah," said Ebenezer, listening in awe.

"—we could fit out armies, make war, levy taxes, patent land, trade

abroad, establish towns and ports of entry "

"Mercy!"

"In short," Charles declared, "for the tribute of two Indian arrows per
annum, Maryland was ours in free and common socage, to manage as we
pleased; and what's more 'twas laid down in the charter that peradventure
any word, clause, or sentence in't were disputed, it must be read so's most
to benefit us, and there's an end on'tl"
"Ffaith, it dizzies me!"

"Aye, 'twas' a mighty charter, and fit reward to George Calvert for a
life of loyal and thankless service. But ere it passed the Great Seal, Grand-
father died, wdrn out at a mere fifty-two years of age, and the charter
passed to his son Cecil, my own dear father, who thus in 1632, when he
was but twenty-six, became Second Lord Baltimore and First Lord Pro-
prietary of the Province of Maryland. Straightway he set to fitting out ves-
sels and rounding up colonists, to what a hue and a cry from Black Bill
Claiborne! To what a gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair amongst the
members of the old Virginia Company, whose charter had long since been

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 93 ]

revoked! They would noise it in Cheapside that Father's great powers de-
prived the people of their liberty, and bruit it in Bankside that the Mary-
landers were given such a surfeit of liberty as to discontent the settlers in
Virginia! They would vow in Limehouse that the Ark and the Dove were
fitting out to carry nuns to Spain, and swear in Kensington 'twas to ferry
Spanish soldiers that Father rigged 'em. So numerous and crafty were his
enemies, that Father must needs stay behind in London to preserve his
rights and trust the voyage to my uncles Leonard and George, who set
out from Gravesend for Maryland on October 18, 1633. But no sooner
doth the Ark weigh anchor than one of Claiborne's spies, hoping to
scuttle us, runs to the Star Chamber and reports we're not cleared through
customs, and our crew hath not sworn the oath of allegiance. Secretary
Coke sends couriers to Admiral Pennington, in the Straits off Sandwich,
to halt us, and back we're sent to London."

"Foul connivance!"

"After a month of haranguing, Father cleared away the charges as false
and malicious, and off we went again. So's not to give Claiborne farther
ammunition, we loaded our Protestants at Gravesend* swpre 'em their oath
off Tilbury, and then sailed down the Channel to the Isle of Wight to load
our Catholics and a brace of Jesuit priests."

"Very clever," Ebenezer said a little uncertainly.

"Then, by Heav'n, off we sail for Maryland at last, with instructions from
Father not to hold our masses in the public view, not to dispute religion
with the Protestants, not to anchor under the Virginians' guns at Port Com-
fort but to lie instead over by Accomac on the Eastern Shore, and not to
have aught to do with Captain Claibome and his people for the first year.

"With the salvages, a nation of Piscataways, we had no quarrel, for they
were happy enough to enlist our defense against their enemies the Seneques
and Susquehannoughs: 'twas the fiend Claiborne, more evil than a score
of salvages, who caused our trouble! This Claiborne was a factor for Clo-
berry and Company, a Councillor of Virginia after her charter was re-
voked, and Secretary of State for the Dominion by appointment of Charles
I, who was easily misled. He ran a fur trade with the Susquehanaoughs
along the Chesapeake, and for that reason had early looked on my grand-
father as a threat to his fortunes. His main interest was Kent Island, halfway
up the Chesapeake, where his trading-post was situated: he'd rather have
surrendered an arm than Kent Island, though 'twas clearly within our grant."

'What did he do?" asked Ebenezer.

"What doth Mr. Claiborne do? Why, says he to himself, Doth not

[94] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Baltimore's charter grant him the land hactemis inculta— Tiitherto unculti-
vated?' And didn't he give up claim to Accomac when 'twas shown the
Virginians had already settled there? Then he must give up Kent Island
too, for my traders beat him to't! Thus he pled to the Lords Commissioners
for Plantations. But mark you, this accursed hactenus inculta was meant
as mere description of the land; 'tis the common language of charters, and
not intended as a condition of the grant. And truth to tell, Claibome's
traders had not tilled the Island at that: they bartered their ware for corn
to live on as well as furs for Cloberry and Company. The Lords Commis-
sioners disallowed his claim, but give up Kent Island he would not. The
Marylanders land in March of 1634— fifty-nine years ago this month-
settle at St. Mary's, and inform Claiborne that Kent Island is theirs; he
will neither swear allegiance to the Proprietary nor take title to Kent
from him,, but asks the Virginia Council what to do. You may depend on't
he doth not tell 'em of the Lords Commissioners' ruling, and news travels
slow from the Privy Council to America; and so they tell him to hold fast,
and that he doth, inflaming all whose ears he can catch against my father.

"Uncle Leonard, in St. Mary's, lets Claibome's year of grace expire and
then commands him to acknowledge Father's rights or suffer imprisonment
and confiscation of the Island. King Charles orders Governor Harvey of
Virginia to protect us from the Indians and allow free trade 'twixt the
colonies, and at the same time, being misled by Claibome's agents to
believe Kent Island outside our patent, he orders Father not to molest
Claiborne! Now Harvey was a right enough Christian man, rest his soul,
willing to live and let live; therefore, our Claiborne, who had no use for
such peaceableness, had long led a faction aimed at unseating the poor
man and driving him from the colony. Thus when Harvey in obeying the
King's order declares his readiness to trade with Maryland, the Virginians
rise up in a rage against him and declare they'd sooner knock their cattle
on the head than sell 'em to us.

"Then 'twas open warfare. Uncle Leonard seizes one of Claibome's
pinnaces in the Patuxent River and arrests her master Thomas Smith for
trading without a license from Father. Claiborne arms a shallop and com-
missions her captain to attack any Maryland vessel he meets. Uncle Leonard
sends out two pinnaces to engage him, and after a bloody fight in the
Pocomoke River, on the Eastern Shore, the shallop surrenders. Two weeks
later another Claiborne vessel under command of the same Tom Smith
fights it out in Pocomoke Harbor. Poor Governor Harvey by this time is
under such fire from his Council that he flies to England for safety.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 95 ]

"Meanwhile Uncle Leonard cuts off the Kent Islanders completely, and
the land being altogether inculta, they commence to starve. Father points
this out to Cloberry and Company, and so persuades them that they pre-
tend no farther title to Kent but send a new attorney to Maryland, with
authority to supersede Claiborne. The devil finally yields, asking only that
the new man, George Evelyn, not deliver Kent Island to the Marylanders;
but Evelyn refuses to promise, and so Claiborne withdraws to London,
where he is sued by Cloberry and charged with mutiny by Governor Harvey.
Furthermore, Evelyn proceeds to attach all of Claiborne's property in Vir-
ginia in the name of Cloberry and Company.

" 'Twas no more than the man deserved," Ebenezer said.

"He saw we'd got the better of him for the nonce, and so he tried a
new tack; he buys him Palmer's Island from his cronies the Susquehan-
noughs, this being in the head of the Chesapeake where their river joins
it, and sets him up a new trading-post there, pretending he's outside our
patent. Then he petitions Charles to forbid Father from molesting him
and further asks— with a plain face, mind!— for a grant to all the land for
twelve leagues either side the Susquehannough River, extending south-
ward down the Bay to the ocean and northward to the Grand Lake of
Canada!"

"You don't tell me!" cried Ebenezer in alarm, though he hadn't the
faintest picture of the geography referred to.

"Aye," nodded Charles. "The man was mad! 'Twould have given him
a strip of New England twenty-four leagues in breadth and near three hun-
dred in length, plus the entire Chesapeake and three fourths of Maryland!
'Twas his hope to fool the King once more as he'd done in the past, but
the Lords Commissioners threw out his petition. Evelyn then acknowledged
Father's title to Kent, and Uncle Leonard named him Commander of the
Island. He attempted to persuade the Islanders to apply to Father for title
to their land and might have won them over,, were't not that the rascally
Tom Smith is established there, along with Claiborne's brother-in-law, and
betwixt the two some armed resistance is mustered against Evelyn. There
was naught for't then but to reduce 'em for good and all, the more since
word had it that Claiborne and Tom Smith were fortifying Palmer's Island
as well. Uncle Leonard himself led two expeditions against the islands, re-
duced them, jailed Smith and John Boteler— Claiborne's kin— and confis-
cated all of Claiborne's property in the Province."

"I trust that chastened the knave!"

"For a time/' Charles replied. "He got him an island in the Bahamas

[96] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

in 1638, and we saw none of him for four or five years. As for Smith and
Boteler, we had 'em jailed, but since the Assembly had never yet convened,
we had no jury to indict 'em, no law to try 'em under, and no court to
try 'em in!"

"How did you manage it?" asked Ebenezer. "Pray don't tell me you
turned them free!"

"Why, we convened the Assembly as a grand inquest to bring the in-
dictment, then magicked 'em into a court to try the case and find the
prisoners guilty. Uncle Leonard then sentences Smith to hang, the court
becomes an Assembly again and passes his sentence as a bill (since we'd
had no law to try the case under), and Uncle Leonard commutes the sen-
tence to insure that no injustice hath been done. As for Boteler, he was
let off with a light sentence."

" Twas a brilliant maneuver!" declared Ebenezer. "A coup de mdttre!"

" 'Twas but the commencement of our woes," said Charles. "No sooner
was the Assembly convened than they demanded the right to enact laws,
albeit the charter plainly reserved that right for the Proprietary, requiring
only the assent of the freemen. Father resisted for a time but had shortly
to concede, at least for the nonce, in order to avoid a mutiny ere the
colony was firmly planted. Howbeit, his acquiescence on this point, me-
thinks, was our undoing, inasmuch as from that day forward the Assembly
was at odds with us, and played us false, and lost no chance to diminish
our power and aggrandize their own."

He sighed.

"And as if this weren't sufficient harassment, 'twas about this time we
learned that the Jesuit missionaries, who since the hour the Ark landed
had been converting Piscataways by the score, had all the while been
taking in return large tracts of land in the name of the Church; and one
fine day they declare to us their intent to hold this enormous territory in-
dependent of the Proprietary!, They knew Father was Catholic and felt
themselves a safe distance from the English praemunire writ, and so an-
nounced that canon law held full sway in the province, and that by the
Papal Bull In Coena Domini they and their fraudulent landholdings were
exempt from the common law!"

"Ah God, such ingrates!" said Ebenezer.

"What they were ignorant of," Charles continued, "was that Grandfather,
ere he turned Catholic, had seen his fill of Jesuitry in Ireland, when James
sent him to investigate the discontent there, 'Twas the Jesuits were foment-
ing rebellion, and, e'en after turning to Rome, he held no love for 'em

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [97]

and warned Father of their subtleties. Father, then, to nip't in the bud
ere the Jesuits snatch the whole Province on the one hand, as Uncle
Leonard feared, or the Protestants use the incident as excuse for an anti-
Papist insurrection on the other— Father, I say, applied to Rome to recall
the Jesuits and send him secular priests instead; and after some years of
dispute the Propaganda ordered it done.

"Next came Indian trouble. The Susquehannoughs to the north and
the Nanticokes on the Eastern Shore had always raided the other tribes
now and again, being hunters and not farmers. But after 1640, for one
cause or another, they took to attacking plantations here and there in the
Province, and there was talk of their stirring up our friends the Piscataways
to join 'em in a wholesale massacre. Uncle Leonard applied to Governor
Berkeley of Virginia to join him in an expedition to reduce the salvages,
but Berkeley's Council refused to help us: small matter to them if every
soul in Maryland lost his scalp! Some said 'twas the French behind it all;
some alleged 'twas the work of the Jesuits; but I believe 'twas the scheming
hand of Bill Claibome at work. Nay, I am sure oft!"

"Claiborne!" said Ebenezer. "How is that? Did I not mishear you, Clai-
borne was hid somewhere in the Bahamas!"

"Aye, so he was. But in 1643, what with the Jesuit trouble, and the
Indian trouble,, and some dissension in the colony over the civil war 'twixt
Charles and the Parliament, Uncle Leonard returned to London to discuss
the affairs of the Province with Father, and no sooner did he sail than
Claiborne commenced slipping up the Bay in secret, trying to stir up
sedition amongst the Kent Islander?. 'Twas about this time one Richard
Ingle— a sea-captain, atheist, and traitor— puts into St. Mary's with a mer-
chantman called the Reformation, drinks himself drunk, and declares to
all and sundry that the King is no king, that had he Prince Rupert aboard
he'd flog him at the capstan and be damned to him, and that he'd take
off the head of any royalist who durst gainsay him!"

"Treason!" Ebenezer exclaimed.

"So said our man Giles Brent, who was Governor against Uncle Leonard's
return; he jailed Ingle and confiscated his ship. But as quick as we clap
the blackguard in irons he's set loose by order of our own Councilman,
Captain Cornwaleys, restored to his ship, and let go free as a fish without
clearing his vessel or paying his debts!"

"I am astonished."

"Now, this Cornwaleys was a soldier and had lately led expeditions to
make peace with the Nanticokes and drive back the Susquehannoughs,

[.98 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

despite the great scarcity of powder and shot in the Province. When we
impeached him for freeing Ingle, 'twas said in his defense he'd exacted
promise from the scoundrel to supply us a barrel of powder and four hun-
dredweight of shot for the defense of the Province— and sure enough the
rascal returns soon after, cursing and assaulting all he meets, and pledges
the ammunition as bail against a future trial. But ere we see a ball oft,
off he sails again, flaunting clearance and port-dues, and takes his friend
Cornwaleys as passenger.

"'Twas soon clear, to our horror, that Ingle and Claiborne, our two
worst enemies, had leagued together to do us in, using the English Civil
War as alibi. Claiborne landed at Kent Island, displayed a false parchment,
and swore 'twas his commission from the King to command the Island.
At the same time, the roundhead Ingle storms St. Mary's with an armed
ship and his own false parchment, which he calls letters of marque from
the Parliament; he reduces the city, drives Uncle Leonard to flee to Virginia,
and so with Claiborne's aid claims the whole of Maryland, which for the
space of two years suffers total anarchy. He pillages here, plunders there,
seizes property; steals the very locks and hinges of every housedoor, and
snatches e'en the Great Seal of Maryland itself, it being forty poundsworth
of good silver. He does not stick e'en at the house and goods of his savior
Cornwaleys but plunders 'em with the rest, and then has Comwaleys
jailed in London as his debtor and a traitor to bootl As a final cut he swears
to the House of Lords he did it all for conscience's sake, forasmuch as
Cornwaleys and the rest of his victims were wicked Papists and malignantsl"

"I cannot comprehend it," confessed Ebenezer.

"In 1646. Uncle Leonard mustered a force with the help of Governor
Berkeley and recaptured St. Mary's and soon all of Maryland— Kent Island
being the last to submit The Province was ours again, though Uncle
Leonard's pains were ill rewarded, for he died a year after."

"Hi!" cried Ebenezer. "What a struggle! I hope with all my heart you
were plagued no more by the likes of Claiborne but enjoyed your Province
in peace and harmony!"

" Twas our due, by Heav'n! It should have been wholly clear to all by
then, that as the proverb hath it, Tis better to rule than be ruled by the
rout. But not three years passed ere the pot of faction and sedition boiled
again."

"I groan to hear it."

" Twas mainly Claiborne again, this time in league with Oliver Crom-
well and the Protestants, though he'd lately been a swaggering royalist."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [99]

"I swear," said Ebenezer, "the fellow's a very Vicar of Bray for shifting
with the weather!"

"Some years before, when the Anglicans ran the Puritans out of Virginia,
Uncle Leonard had given 'em leave to make a town called Providence on
the Severn River, inasmuch as none suffered in Maryland by reason of
his faith. But these Protestants were arch ingrates, and despised us Roman-
ists, and would swear no allegiance to Father. They plainly declared their
eagerness for his overthrow and watched jealously for any excuse to seize
the government. When Charles I was beheaded and Charles II driven to
exile, Father made no protest but acknowledged Parliament's authority;
he e'en saw to't that the Catholic Thomas Greene, Governor after Uncle
Leonard died, was replaced by a Protestant and friend of Parliament, Wil-
liam Stone, so's to give the malcontents in Providence no occasion to
rebel. His thanks for this wisdom was to have Charles II, exiled on the
Isle of Jersey, declare him a Roundhead and grant the Maryland govern-
ment to Sir William Davenant, the poet/'

"Davenant!" exclaimed Ebenezer. "Ah, now, 'tis a right noble vision,
the poet-king! Yet do I blush for my craft, that the fellow took a prize so
unfairly giv'n."

"He got not far with't, for no sooner did he sail for Maryland than a
Parliament cruiser waylaid him in the Channel off Lands End, and that
scotched him."

"Colleague or no,'7 Ebenezer declared, "I've no pity for him."

"Now Virginia,, don't you know, was royalist to the end, and when she
proclaimed Charles II directly his father was axed, Parliament made ready
a fleet to reduce her to submission. Just then, in 1650, our Governor Stone
hied him to Virginia on business and deputized his predecessor Thomas
Greene to govern till his return. 'Twas a fool's decision, inasmuch as this
Greene still smarted at having been replaced and despised Father as a
traitor to the Crown and the Roman Church. Directly he's deputized he
declares with Virginia for Charles II as the rightful ruler of England, and
for all Governor Stone hastens back and turns the fellow out, the damage
is done! The dastard Dick Ingle was still a free man in London, and directly
word reached him he flew to the committee in charge of reducing Virginia
and caused 'em to add Maryland to the commission. How the man yearned
to plunder us again! But Father caught wind oft, and ere the fleet sailed
he petitioned that Greene's proclamation had been made without his
authority or knowledge, and caused the name of Maryland to be stricken
from the commission. Thinking that guaranty enough, he retired: straight-

[ 100 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

way sly Bill Claiborne appears and, trusting as always that the committee
knows naught of American geography, sees to't the commission is rewrit
to include all the plantations within the Bay of Chesapeake— which is to
say, all of Maryland! What's more, he gets himself appointed as an alternate
commissioner of Parliament to sail with the fleet. There were three com-
missioners— all reasonable gentlemen, if misled— and two alternates:
Claiborne and another scoundrel, Richard Bennett, that had taken ref-
uge in our Providence town what time Virginia turned out her Puritans."

"Marry!" cried Ebenezer. "I ne'er have heard of such perfidy!"

"Stay," said Charles. "Not content with being alternates, Claiborne
and Bennett see to't two of the commissioners are lost at sea during the
passage, and step ashore at Point Comfort with full authority over both
Virginia and Maryland!"

" 'Sbodikins! The man's a very Machiavell"

"They reduce Virginia; Bennett appoints himself Governor and
Claiborne Secretary of State; then they turn to Maryland, where the rascals
in Providence greet 'em with open arms. Good Governor Stone is de-
posed, Catholics are stripped of their rights wholesale, and all Father's
authority is snatched away. As a last stroke, Claiborne and Bennett rouse
up the old Virginia Company to petition for wiping Maryland off the map
entirely and restoring the ancient boundaries of Virginia! Father pled
his case to the Commissioners for Plantations, and while it lay a-cooking
he reminded Oliver Cromwell that Maryland had stayed loyal to the Com-
monwealth in the face of her royalist neighbors. Cromwell heard him out,
and later, when he dissolved Parliament and named himself Lord Protector,
he assured Father of his favor.

"Governor Stone meanwhile had got himself back into office, and
Father ordered him to proclaim the Protectorate and declare the commis-
sioners' authority expired. Claiborne and Bennett muster a force of their
own and depose Stone again favor of the Puritan William Fuller from
Providence, Father appeals to Cromwell, Cromwell sends an order to Ben-
nett and Claiborne to desist, and Father orders Stone to raise a force and
march on Fuller in Providence. But Fuller hath more guns,, and so he forces
Stone's men to surrender on promise of quarter. No sooner doth he have
'em than he murders four of Stone's lieutenants on the spot and throws
Stone, grievously wounded, into prison. Fuller's beasts then seize the Great
Seal, confiscate and plunder at will, and drive all Catholic priests out of
the Province in fear of their lives; Claiborne and his cohorts raise a hue
and a ciy again to the Commissioners for Plantations. But 'tis all in vain,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 1O1 ]

for at last, in 1658, the Province is restored to Father, and the government
delivered to Josias Fendall, whom Father had named to represent him after
Stone was jailed."

"Thank Heav'n!" said Ebenezer. "All's well that ends well!"
"And ill as ends ill," replied Charles, "for that same year, 1658, Fendall
turned traitor/'

"Tis too much!" cried Ebenezer. "Tis a surfeit of treachery!"
"Tis the plain truth. Some say he was the tool of Fuller and Claiborne,
inasmuch as Fuller had once arrested him and released him only on
oath of allegiance to the poltroons. However 'twas, Cromwell being dead
and his son a weakling, Fendall persuaded the Assembly to declare them-
selves independent of the Proprietary, overthrew the whole constitution
of the Province, and usurped every trace of Father's authority. TwouldVe
been a sorry time for us, had not Charles II been restored to the throne
shortly after. Father, Heav'n knows how, made peace with him, and ob-
tained royal letters commanding all to support his government and directing
Berkeley of Virginia to aid him. Uncle Philip Calvert was named governor,
and the whole conspiracy collapsed at once: Maryland was ours again—
albeit the Assembly remained a thorn in our side."
"Dare I hope your trials ended there?" asked Ebenezer.
"For a time we suffered no more rebellions," Charles admitted. "I came
to St. Mary's as governor in 1661, and in 1675, when my dear father died,
I became third Lord Baltimore. During that time our only real troubles
were scattered assaults by the Indians and certain attempts by the Dutch,
the Swedes, and others to snatch away some of our land by the old hactenus
inculta gambit. The Dutch had long before settled illegally on the Dela-
ware River, and Governor D'Hinoyossa of New Amstel stirred up the
Jhonadoes, the Cinagoes, and the Mingoes against us. I considered making
war on him, but decided against it for fear King Charles (who had already
broken sundry of my charter-privileges) might take the opportunity to seize
the whole Delaware territory—I lost it anyhow in 1664, to his brother the
Duke of York, and could not raise a word of protest.

"The year I became Lord Baltimore it happened that the Cinagoes (what
the French call Seneques) descended on the Susquehannoughs, who were
fierce enough themselves, and they in turn overran Maryland and Virginia.
The outrages that followed were the excuse for Bacon's Rebellion in Vir-
ginia and the cause of much unrest in Maryland. Some time before, in
order to harness somewhat the malcontents and seditionists in the Assem-
bly, I had restricted the suffrage to the better class of citizens, and held

[l02] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the Assembly in long session to avoid the risk of new elections; but even
this failed to quiet things— insurrection was in the very air, and no governor
durst raise an army to quell Indians or conspirators for fear 'twould turn
on him. My enemies intrigued against me from all quarters. Even old
Claiborne reappears on the scene, albeit he was well past eighty, and, pos-
ing as a royalist again, petitions the King against me— to no avail, happily,
and 'twas my indescribable pleasure not long after to hear of the scoundrel's
death in Virginia."

" Tis my pleasure as well to hear oft now," declared Ebenezer, "for I'd
come to fear the knave was immortal! We are the better for his passing,
I swear!"

"I was accused of everything from Popery to defrauding the King's rev-
enues," Charles went on. "As if my own weren't being defrauded on every
side! When Nat Bacon turned his private army on Governor Berkeley in
Virginia, a pair of rascals named William Davis and John Pate attempted
a like rebellion in Calvert County— urged on, I think, by the turncoats
William Fuller and Josias Fendall, who ranged privily about the Province
causing trouble. I was in London at the time, but when I heard of the
thing, and heard it said that the insurgents denied the lawfulness of my
Assembly, I straightway had my deputy hang the both of 'em,, and nipped
the matter ere it got out of hand. But not four years later the traitor Fen-
dall conspires with a new villain to incite a new revolt: This was the false
priest, John Coode, I spoke of, that puts e'en Black Bill Claiborne in the,
shade. I squelched their game in time and banished Fendall forever, though
the conniving Assembly let Coode off free as a bird, to cause more trouble
later.

"After this the intrigues and tribulations came in a great rush, such that
six Lords Proprietary could scarce have dealt with all In 1681, to settle a
private debt, King Charles grants a large area north of Maryland to William
Penn-may his Quaker fat be rendered in the fires of helll-and immedi-
ately I'm put to't to defend my northern border against his smooth de-
ceits and machinations. 'Twas laid out in my charter that Maryland's
north boundary is Latitude Forty, and to mark that parallel I had long
since caused a blockhouse to be built for the Susquehannoughs. Penn
agreed with me that his boundary should run north of the blockhouse,
but when his grant appeared no mention at all was made oft. Instead there
was a string of nonsense fit to muddle any templar, and to insure his scheme
Penn sent out a lying surveyor with a crooked sextant to take his obser-
vations. The upshot oft was, he declared his southern boundary to be

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 103 ]

eight miles south of my blockhouse and resorted to every evasion and sub-
terfuge to avoid conferring with me on this outrage. When finally we treed
him and proposed a mutual observation, he pled a broken sextant; and
when our own instrument showed the line in its true location, he accused
me of subverting the King's authority. So concerned was he that the
boundary fall where he wished, he proposed a devil's bag of tricks to gain
it. Measure north from the Capes, he says, at the short measure of sixty
miles to the degree; lower your south border by thirty miles, he says, and
snatch land from the Virginians; measure two degrees north from Watkins
Point, he says. Then I ask him, 'Why this measuring and land-snatching?
Why not take sextant in hand- and find the fortieth parallel for good and
all?7 At last he agrees, but only on condition that should the line fall north
of where he wants it, I must sell him the difference at a 'gentleman's
price/"

"I cannot fathom it," Ebenezer admitted. "All this talk of sextants and
parallels leaves me faint."

"The truth was," said Charles, "Penn had sworn to his Society for Trade
that his grant included the headwaters of the Bay and he was resolved to
have't, come what might, for all his lying pieties and smooth platitudes.
When all else failed he fell to plotting with his friend the Duke of York
next door, and when to my great distress the Duke took the throne as
James II, Penn conjures him up that accursed specter of a hactenus inculta
again and gets himself granted the whole Delaware territory, the which
was neither his to take nor James's to grant, but clearly and unmistakably
mine.

"Matters reached such a pass that though I feared to leave the Province
to my enemies for e'en a minute, I had no recourse but to sail for London
in 1684 to fight this Penn's intrigues. Now for some time I had been falsely
accused of allowing smugglers to defraud the King's port-revenues and of
failing to assist the royal tax collectors, and had even paid a fine for't
No sooner do I weigh anchor for London than my kinsman George Talbot
in St. Mary's allows a rascally beast of a tax collector to anger him and
stabs the knave dead. Twas a fool's act, and my enemies seized on't at
once. Against all justice they refuse to try him in the Province, but instead
deliver him to Effingham, then governor of Virginia—who, by the way,
later plotted with the Privy Council to have the whole of Maryland granted
to himself!— and 'twas all I could manage to save his neck. Shortly after-
wards another customs officer is murthered, and though 'twas a private
quarrel, my enemies put the two together to color me a traitor to the Crown.

[ 104 1 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Penn, meanwhile, commenced a quo warranto suit against my entire
charter, and with his friend on the throne I doubt not what would have
been the result: as't happened, the folk of England just then pressed their
own quo warranto, so to speak, against King James, and Penn's game was
spoilt, for the nonce, by the revolution."

"I cannot tell how relieved I am to hear it!" Ebenezer declared.

"Ah," sighed Charles, "but 'twas my loss either way: when James was
on the throne my enemies called me disloyal to him; when he went in
exile, and William landed in England, all they cared to remember was that
both James and I were Catholics. Twas then, at the worst possible time,
my fool of a Deputy Governor William Josephs sees fit to declare to the
Assembly his belief in the divine right of kings and, folly of follies, makes
Maryland proclaim officially the birth of James's Catholic son!"

"I tremble for you," Ebenezer said.

" Tis fit, 'tis fit. Naturally, the instant William took the throne I sent
word to the Maryland Council to proclaim him. But whether from natural
causes or, as I suspect, from the malice of my enemies, the messenger died
on shipboard and was buried at sea, and his commission with him, so that
Maryland remained silent even after Virginia and New England had pro-
claimed. I sent a second messenger at once, but the harm was done, and
those who were not crying 'Papist!' were crying 'Jacobite!' On the heels of
this misfortune, in 1689 my enemies in England caused me to be outlawed
in Ireland on charges of committing treason there against William in
James's behalf— though in sooth I'd never in my life set foot on Irish soil and
was at the very moment in England expressly to fight the efforts of James
and Penn to snatch Maryland from me! To top it all, in March of the same
year they spread a rumor over Maryland that a great conspiracy of nine
thousand Catholics and Indians had invaded the Province to murther every
Protestant in the land: the men sent to Mattapany, at the mouth of the
Potomac, are told of massacres at the river's head and, rushing there to
save the day,, find the settlers arming against such massacres as they've
heard of in Mattapany! For all my friends declare 'tis naught but a sleeve-
less fear and imagination, the whole Province is up in arms against the
Catholics."

"Blind! Blind!"

"Aye, but 'twas no worse than the anti-Papism here in London," said
Charles. "My only pleasure in this dark hour was to see that lying Quaker
Penn himself arrested and jailed as a Jesuit!"

"Small consolation, but i'faith it cheers me, tool"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 105 ]

"Naught now remained but for the conspirators to administer the coup
de grdce, for ne'er had my position been weaker. This they did in July,
led by the false priest John Coode. He marches on St. Mary's with an
armed force, promotes himself to the rank of general, and for all he'd used
to be a Catholic himself, shouts Papist and Jesuit to the skies until the
whole city surrenders. The President and Council flee to Mattapany, where
Coode besieges 'em in the fort till they give up the government to him.
Then, calling themselves the Protestant Associators, they beg King Wil-
liam to snatch the government for himself I"

"I am astonished!" Ebenezer said. "Surely King William hanged him!"

Charles, who had been talking as rapidly and distractedly as though tell-
ing a rosary of painful beads, now seemed really to notice Ebenezer for
the first time since commencing the history.

"My dear Poet. . . ." He smiled thinly. "William is at war with King
Louis: in the first place, for aught anyone knows the war might spread to
America, and he is most eager to gain control of all the colonies against
this possibility. In the second place, war is expensive, and my revenues
could help to pay his soldiers. In the third place, he holds the crown by
virtue of an anti-Papist revolution, and I am a Papist. In the fourth place,
the government of Maryland was imploring him to rescue the province
from the oppression of Catholics and Indians "

"Enough, enough!" cried Ebenezer. "I fear me he snatched it!"

"Aye, he snatched my Maryland from me."

"But by what legal right "

"Ah, 'twas wondrous legal," said Charles. "William instructed the At-
torney General to proceed against my charter by way of scire facias, but
reflecting afterwards on the time such litigation would require, and the
treasury's dire need for food, and the possibility of the Court's finding in
my favor— as he was sensible they must if the thing were done aright— he
asks Chief Justice Holt to find him a way to snatch my Maryland with less
bother. Holt ponders awhile, scratches round till he recalls that jus est id
quod principi placet, and then declares, in all solemnity, that though
'twould be better the charter were forfeited in a proper inquisition, yet
since no inquisition hath been held, and since by the King's own word the .
matter is urgent, he thinks the King might snatch him the government on
the instant and do his investigating later."

"Why," said Ebenezer, "I am aghast! Tis like hanging a man today and
trying his crime tomorrow!"

Charles nodded. "In August of 1691 milord Sir Lionel Copley became

[ 106 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the first royal governor of the crown colony of Maryland," he concluded.
"My rank fell from that of count palatine, a veritable prince with power
of life and death over my subjects, to that of common landlord, entitled
only to my quit rents, my port duty of fourteen pence per ton on foreign
vessels,, and my tobacco duty of one shilling per hogshead. The Commis-
sioners of the Privy Seal, be't said to their credit, disputed Lord Holt's
decision, and in fact when the quo warranto was instigated the allegations
against me fell to pieces for lack of evidence, and no judgment was found.
But of course 'twas precisely because he foresaw this that William had
leaped ere he looked: you may depend on't he held fast to Maryland,
judgment or no judgment, and clasps her yet like a lover his mistress; for
Possession is nine points of the law in any case, and with a king 'tis parlia-
ment, statute book, and courtroom all together! Tis said in sooth, A king's
favor is no inheritance; and A king promiseth all, and observeth what he
will"

"And," added Ebenezer, "He who eats the King's goose shall choke on
the feathers!1

"How?" Charles demanded angrily. "D'you twit me, fellow? Think thee
Maryland was e'er King William's goose?"

"Nay, nay!" Ebenezer protested, "You misread the saying! Tis meant to
signify merely, that A great dowry is a bed full of brambles, don't you
know: A great man and a great river are ill neighbors, or A king's bounty
is a mixed blessing'9

"Enough, I grasp it. So, then, there is your Maryland, fellow. Think you
'tis fit for a Marylandiad?"

"I'faith," replied Ebenezer, "'twere fitter for a Jeremiad! Ne'er have I
encountered such a string of plots, cabals, murthers, and machinations in
life or literature as this history you relate me— it sets my head a-twirl, and
chills my blood!"

Charles smiled, "And doth it haply inspire your pen?"

"Ah God, what a dolt and boor must Your Lordship think me, to burst
upon you with grand notions of couplet and eulogy! I swear to you I am
sorry for't: I shall leave at once."

. "Stay, stay," said Charles, as Ebenezer rose to leave. "I will confess to
you, this Marylandiad of yours is not without interest to me/'

"Nay," Ebenezer said, "you but chide me for punishment,"

"I am an old man," Charles declared, "with small time left on earth "

"Heav'n forbid!"

"Nay, 'tis clear truth/' Charles insisted. "The prime of my life, and more,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 107 ]

I've laid on the altar of a prosperous, well-governed Maryland, which was
given me in trust by my dear father, and him by his, to husband and
improve, and which I dreamed of handing on to my son a richer, worthier
estate for my having ruled it."

"Ah, many, I am in tears!"

"And now in my old age I find this shan't be/' Charles continued.
"Maryland was mine to preserve, and I have lost her for good and all
Moreover, I am too aged and infirm to make another ocean passage and
so must die here in England without laying eyes again upon that land as
dear to my heart as the wife of my body,, and whose abduction and rape
stings me as e'er did Helen's Menelaus."

"I can bear no more!" wept Ebenezer, patting his eyes and blowing his
nose delicately into his handkerchief.

"I have no authority/' Charles concluded, "and so can no longer confer
dignities and titles as before. But I declare to you this, Mr. Cooke: hie you
to Maryland; put her history out of mind and look you at her peerless
virtues— the graciousness of her inhabitants, their good breeding and excel-
lent dwelling places, the majesty of her laws, the comfort of her inns and
ordinaries, the richness and beauty of her fields, woods, and waters— look you
at these, I say; study them; mark them well. Then, if you can, turn what you
see to verse; tune and music it for all the world's ears! Rhyme me such a
rhyme, Eben Cooke; verse me such a verse, I charge you; make me this
Maryland, that neither time nor intrigue can rob me of; that I can pass on
to my son and my son's son and all the ages of the world! Sing me this song,
sir, and by my faith, in the eyes and heart of Charles Calvert and of every
Christian lover of Beauty and Justice, thou'rt in sooth Poet and Laureate
of the Province! And should e'er it come to pass— what against all hope and
expectation I nightly pray for to Holy Mary and all saints— that one day
the entire complexion of things alters, and my sweet province is once again
restored to her proprietor, then, by Heav'n, I shall confer you the title in
fact, lettered on sheepskin, beribboned in satin, signed by myself, and
stamped for the world to gape at with the Great Seal of Maryland!"

Ebenezer's heart was too full for words: color rushed to his cheeks, his
features jerked and boiled, tears sprang to his eyes.

"In the meantime/' Charles went on, "I shall, if t please you, at least
commission you to write the poem. Nay, better, I'll pen thee a draft of the
Laureate's commission, and should God e'er grant me back my Maryland,
'twill retroact to this very day."

[ 108 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"'SheartlTis past belief!"

Charles had his man fetch him paper, ink, and quill, and with the air of
one accustomed to the language of authority, quickly penned the following
commission:

CHARLES ABSOLUTE LORD & PROPRIETARY OF THE PROVINCES
OF MARYLAND & AVALON LORD BARON OF BALTIMORE & To
Our Trusty and Welbeloved Our Dear Ebenezer Cooke Esqr of Cookes Poynt
Dorset County Greeting Whereas it is our Desire that the Sundrie Excellencies
of Our Province of Maryland aforesaid be set down in Verse for Generations
to Come and Whereas it is Our Conviction that Your talents Well Equip
You for that Task &* We Do Will and Command you upon the Faith which
You Owe unto Us that You do compose and construct such an Epical Poem,
setting forth the Graciousness of Marylands Inhabitants, Their Good Breeding
and Excellent Dwelling-places, the Majesty of her Laws, the Comfort of Her
Inns and Ordinaries &* &* and to this Purpose We do Name and Entitle You
Poet and Laureat of the Province of Maryland Aforesaid. Witness Ourself at
the City of London the twenty-eighth Day of March in the eighteenth Year
of Our Dominion over Our said Province of Maryland Annoq Dom 1694

"Out on't!" he cried, handing the finished draft to Ebenezer. " Tis done^
and I wish you fair passage."

Ebenezer read the commission, flung himself upon his knees before Lord
Baltimore, and pressed that worthy's coat hem to his lips in gratitude. Then,
mumbling and stumbling, he pocketed the document, excused himself, and
ran from the house into the bustling streets of London.

ii: EBENEZER RETURNS TO HIS COMPANIONS, FINDS
THEM FEWER BY ONE, LEAVES THEM FEWER BY
ANOTHER, AND REFLECTS A REFLECTION

"LOCKET'S!" CRIED EBENEZER TO ms CABMAN, ANT> SPRANG INTO THE
hackney with a loose flail of limbs like a mismanaged marionette. With
what a suddenness had he scaled the lofty reaches of Parnassus, while his
companions blundered yet in the foothills! Snatching out his commission,
he read again the sweet word Laureat and the catalogue of Maryland's
excellencies.

"Sweet land!" he exclaimed. "Pregnant with song! Thy deliverer ap-
proachethl"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ log ]

There was a conceit worth saving, he reflected: such subtle vistas of mean-
ing in the word deliverer, for instance, with its twin suggestions of midwife
and savior! He lamented having no pen nor any paper other than Balti-
more's commission, which after kissing he tucked away in his coat.

"I must purchase me a notebook," he decided. " Twere a pity such wild-
flowers should die unplucked. No more may I think merely of my own
delight, for a laureate belongs to the world/'

Soon the hackney cab reached Locket's, and after rewarding the driver
most handsomely, Ebenezer hurried to find his colleagues, whom he'd not
seen since the night of the wager. Once inside, however, he assumed a
slower, more dignified pace, in keeping with his position, and weaved
through the crowded tables to where he spied his friends.

Dick Merriweather, throwing back his head to down a half pint of sack,
noticed him first.

" 'Sblood!" he shouted. "Look ye yonder, what comes hitherl Am I
addled with the sack, or is't Lazarus untombed and walking?"

"How now!" Tom Trent joined in. "Hath the spring wind thawed ye,
dear boy? I feared me you was ossified for good and all."

"Thawed?" said Ben Oliver, and winked. "Nay, Tom, for how could such
a lover e'er be chilled? 'Tis my guess he's only now regained his strength
from his mighty joust the night of our wager and is back to take all comers."

"Lightly, Ben," reproved Tom Trent, and glanced apprehensively at
John McEvoy beside him, who,, however, was entirely absorbed in regarding
Ebenezer and seemed not to have heard the remark. " 'Tis unbecoming a
good fellow, to hold a grudge so long o'er such a trifle."

"Nay, nay," Ben insisted. "What more pleasant or instructive, I ask you,
than to hear of great deeds from the lips of their doers? Hither with thee,
Ebenezer lad. Take a pot with us and tell us all plainly, as a man amongst
men: What think you now of this Joan Toast that you did swive? How is
she in the bed, I mean, and what fearsome bargain did you drive for your
five guineas, that we've seen none of you this entire week, or her since?
Marry, what a man!"

"Curb your evil tongue," Ebenezer commanded crisply, taking a seat.
"You know the story as well as I."

"Hi!" cried Ben, taken aback. "Such bravery! What, will you say naught
by way of explanation or defense when a very trollop scorns you?"

Ebenezer shrugged. " 'Tis near as e'er she'll come to greatness."

"Great Heav'nl" Tom Trent exclaimed, voicing the general astonish-

[lio] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

ment. "Who is this stranger with the brave replies? I know the face and I
know the voice, but b'm'faith, 'tis not the Eben Cooke of old!"

"Nay," agreed Dick Merriweather, " 'tis some swaggering impostor. The
Cooke I knew was e'er a shy fellow, something stiff in the joints, and no
great hand at raillery. Know you aught of his whereabouts?" he asked
Ebenezer.

"Aye"— Ebenezer smiled— "I know him well, for 'twas I alone saw him
die and wrote his elegy."

"And prithee, sir, what carried him off?" inquired Ben Oliver with as
much of a sneer as could be salvaged from his recent confounding. "Belike
'twas the pain of unrequited love?"

"Your ignorance of the facts," Ebenezer replied, "is matched only
by the deficiency of your imagination. The truth of the matter is, sirs, he
perished in childbirth the night of the wager and never learned that what
he'd been suffering was the pains of labor— the more intense, for that he'd
carried the fetus since childhood and was brought to bed oft uncommon
late. Howbeit, 'twas the world's good luck he had him an able midwife,
who delivered full-grown the man you see before you."

"Ffaith!" declared Dick Merriweather. "I have fair lost sight o' you in
this Hampton Court Hedge of a conceit! Speak literally, £n't please you, if
only for a sentence, and lay open plainly what is signified by all this talk of
death and midwives and the rest of the allegory."

"I shall," smiled Ebenezer, "but I would Joan Toast were present to
hear't, inasmuch as 'twas she who played all innocently the midwife's part.
Do fetch her, McEvoy, that all the world may know I bear no ill will towards
either of you. Albeit you acted from malice, yet, as the proverb hath it,
Many a thing groweih in the garden, that was not planted there; or even
A man's fortune may be made by his enviers. Certain it is, your mischief
bore fruit beyond my grandest dreams! You said of me once that I compre-
hend naught of life, and perchance 'tis true; but you must allow farther
that Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, and that A castle may be
taken by storm, that ne'er would fall to siege. The fact is, I've wondrous
news to tell. Will you summon her?"

Ever since Ebenezer's appearance in the winehouse, and throughout all
the raillery and allegorizing, McEvoy had sat quietly, even sullenly, without
comment or apparent curiosity. Now, however, he got up from his place,
growled "Summon her yourself, damn ye!" and left the tavern in a great
sulk.

"What ails him?" asked Ebenezer. "The man meant me a dastard injury

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 111 ]

—doth it chagrin him that it misfired into fortune? Twas a civil request; did
I know Joan's whereabouts I'd fetch her myself."

"So I doubt not would he/' Ben Oliver said.

"What is't you say?"

"Did you not hear it said before," asked Tom Trent, "that nor hide nor
hair of your Joan have we seen these three days past?"

"I took it for a simple twit," said Ebenezer. "You mean she's gone in
sooth?"

"Aye," affirmed Dick, "the tart is vanished from sight, and not her hus-
band nor any soul else knows aught oft. The last anyone saw of her was
the day after the wager. She was in a fearful fret "

"I'faith," put in Ben, "there was no speaking to the woman!"

"We took it for a pout," Dick went on, "forasmuch as you'd That is

to say "

"She'd scorned four guineas from a good man," Ben declared in a last
effort at contempt, "and got in exchange a penceless preachment from "

"From Ebenezer Cooke, my friends," Ebenezer finished, unable to hold
back the news any longer, "who this very day hath been named by Lord
Baltimore to be Poet and Laureate of the entire Province of Maryland!
And you've not seen the wench since, you say?"

But none heard the question: they looked at each other and at Ebenezer.

"Egad!"

"'Sblood!"

"Is't true? Thou'rt Laureate of Maryland?"

"Aye," said Ebenezer, who actually had said only that he'd been named
Laureate, but deemed it too late, among other things, to clarify the
misunderstanding. "I sail a few days hence for America, to manage the
estate where I was born, and by command of Lord Baltimore to do the
office of Laureate for the colony."

"Have you commission and all?" Tom Trent marveled.

Ebenezer did not hesitate. "The Laureate's commission is in the writ-
ing," he explained, "but already I'm commissioned to turn him a poem."
He pretended to search his pockets and came up with the document in his
coat, which he passed around the table to great effect.

"By Heav'n 'tis true!" Tom said reverently.

"Laureate of Maryland! It staggers me!" said Dick.

"I will confess," said Ben, visibly awed, "I'd ne'er have guessed it possible.
But out on't! Here's a pot to you, Master Laureate! Hi there, barman, a pint
all around! Come, Tom! Ho, Dick! Let's have a health, nowl"

[ 112 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Gladly!"

"Here's to him!"

"I hope I may call it," said Ben, putting his arm about Ebenezer's
shoulders, "for 'tis many a night old Eben's taken my twitting in good
grace, that would have rankled a meaner spirit. Twould be as fair an honor
to propose this health t'you, friend, as 'twill be for me to pay for't. Prithee
grant me that, and 'twere proof of a grace commensurate to thy talent."

"Your praise flatters me the more," Ebenezer said modestly, "for that I
know you— how well!— to be no flatterer. Tis a double honor," he pointed
out further, "to be toasted by such a toaster, and by how much the less I
merit your compliments, by so much the more am I humbled by 'em. In
fine, toast away if you will, and a long life to you!"

The waiter had by this time brought the pints, and the four men raised
their glasses.

"Nay," cried Ben, thinking better of it, "all London must know it! Hi
there,, sots and poetasters!" He shouted to the house at large, springing up
on the table. "Put by your gossip for the nonce and drink a health with me—
as worthy a health as e'er was drunk under these rafters!"

"Nay, I beg you, Ben!" Ebenezer protested, tugging Ben's coat

"Hear!" cried several patrons, for Ben was a favorite among them.

"Drag off yon skinny fop and raise your glasses!" someone cried.

"Scramble up here," Ben ordered, and Ebenezer was lifted willy-nilly to
the table top, somewhat uncertain about the propriety of accepting the
compliment.

"To the long life, good health, and unfailing talent of Ebenezer Cooke,"
Ben proposed, and everyone in the room raised his glass, "who while we
lesser fry spent our energies braying and strutting, sat aloof and husbanded
his own, and crowed him not a crow nor, knowing himself an eagle, cared
a bean what barnyard fowl thought of him; and who, therefore, while the
rest of us cocks must scratch our dunghills in feeble envy, hath spread his
wings and taken flight, for who can tell what lofty eyrie! I give thee
Ebenezer Cooke, lads, twitted and teased by all— none more than myself—
who this day was made Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland!"

A general murmur went round the room, followed by a clamor of polite
congratulation that rushed like wine to Ebenezer's heaH, for it was the first
such experience in the entire span of his life.

"I thank you," he said thickly to the room, his eyes filling. "I can say
no more!"

"Hear! Hear!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [l1?]

"A poem, sir!" someone called.

"Aye, a poem!"

Ebenezer got hold of himself and stayed the clamor with a gesture.
"Nay," he said, "the muse is no minstrel, that sings for a pot in the taverns;
besides, I've not a line upon me. This is the place for a toast, not for poetry,
and 'twill greatly please me do you join my toast to my magnanimous
patron Lord Baltimore "

A few glasses went up, but not many, for anti-Papist feeling was running
high in London.

"To the Maryland Muse " Ebenezer added, perceiving the small

response, and got a few more hands for his trouble.

"To Poetry, fairest of the arts"— many additional glasses were raised—
"and to every poet and good-fellow in this tavern, which for gay and gifted
patrons hath not its like in the hemisphere!"

"Hearl" the crowd saluted, and downed the toast to a man.

It was near midnight when Ebenezer returned at last to his rooms, dizzy
from excessive wine and applause. He called in vain for Bertrand and tipsily
commenced undressing, still very full of his success. But whether because of
the silence of his room after Locket's or the unhappy sight of his bed lying
still unmade as he'd left it in the morning, the linens all rumpled and soiled
from his four days' despair, or some more subtle agency, his gaiety seemed
to leave him with his clothes; when at length he had stripped himself of
shoes, drawers, shirt, and periwig, and stood shaved, shorn, and mother-
naked in the center of his room, his mind was dull,, his eyes listless, his
stance uncertain. The great success of his first plunge still thrilled him to
contemplate, but no longer was it entirely a pleasurable excitement. His
stomach felt weak. All that Charles had told him of the tumultuous history
of Maryland came like a bad dream to his memory, and turning out the
lamp he hurried to the window for fresh air.

Despite the hour, London bristled in the darkness beneath and all around
him with a quiet roar, from which came at intervals here a drunkard's
shout, there a cabman's curse, the laughter of a streetwalker, the whinny of
a horse. A damp spring breeze moved in off the Thames and breathed on
him: out there on the river that winds through the city, anchors were being
weighed and catted, sails unfurled from yards and sheeted home, bearings
taken, soundings called, and dark ships run down the tide, out the black
Channel, and thence to the boundless ocean, cresting and tossing under
the moon. Great restless creatures were stirring and gliding in the depths;

[114] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

pale gray sea birds wheeling and shrieking down the night wind, or planing
wildly against the scud. And could one then suppose that somewhere far
out under the stars there really lay a Maryland, against whose long sand
coasts the black sea foamed? That at that very instant, peradventure, some
naked Indian prowled the reedy dunes or stalked his quarry down whisper-
ing aisles of the forest?

Ebenezer shuddered, turned from the window, and drew the curtains
fast. His stomach was extremely uneasy. He lay down on the bed and tried
to sleep, but with no success: the daring of his interview with Charles
Calvert, and all that followed on it, kept him tossing and turning long
after his muscles had begun to ache and his eyes to bum for sleep. The
specters of William Claiborne, Richard Ingle, William Penn, Josias
Fendall, and John Coode— their strange and terrible energy, their in-
trigues and insurrections—chilled and sickened him but refused to be driven
from his awareness; and he could not give over remembering and pronounc-
ing his title even after repetition had taken pleasure and sense from the
epithet and left it a nightmare string of empty sounds. His saliva ran freely;
he was going to be ill. Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland!
He had leaped astride life and set out on his journey. There was no turning
back now. Out under the night, Maryland and his single mortal destiny
awaited him.

"Ah, God!" he wept at last, and sprang from the bed in an icy sweat.
Running to the chamber pot he flung off the lid and with a retch heaved
into it the wine of his triumph. Once delivered of it, he felt somewhat
calmer: he returned to the bed, clasped his knees against his chest to quiet
the agitation of his stomach, and so contrived, after countless fretful sighs,
a sort of sleep.

PART II: GOING TO MALDEN

i: THE LAUREATE ACQUIRES A NOTEBOOK

HAPPILY, WHATEVER TREPIDATIONS OR DANK NIGHT DOUBTS HAD LATELY

plagued the Laureate's repose, when the sun rose next morning over Lon-
don they were burned off with the mist of the Thames; he woke at nine
refreshed in body and spirit, and, when he remembered the happenings of
the day before and his new office, it was with unalloyed delight.

"Bertrand! You, Bertrandl" he called, springing from the bed. "Are you
there, fellow?"

His man appeared at once from the next room.

"Did you sleep well, sir?"

"Like a silly babe. What a morning! It ravishes me!"

"Methought I heard ye taken with the heaves last night."

" 'Sheart, a sour pint, belike, at Locket's," Ebenezer replied lightly, "or
a stein of green ale. Fetch my shirt there, will you? There's a good fellow.
Egad, what smells as fresh as new-pressed linen or feels as clean?"

" Tis a marvel ye threw it off so. Such a groaning and a hollowing!"

"Indeed?" Ebenezer laughed and began to dress with leisurely care.
"Nay, not those; my knit cottons today. Hollowing, you say? Some passing
nightmare, I doubt not; I've no memory oft Nothing to fetch surgeon or
priest about."

"Priest, sir!" Bertrand exclaimed with a measure of alarm. "Tis true,
then, what they say?"

"It may be, or it may not. Who are they, and what is their story?"

"Some have it, sir," Bertrand replied glibly, "thou'rt in Lord Baltimore's
employ, who all the world knows is a famous Papist, and that 'twas only on
your conversion to Rome he gave ye your post."

" 'Dslife!" Ebenezer turned to his man incredulously. "What scurrilous
libel! How came you to hear it?"

Bertrand blushed. "Begging your pardon, sir, ye may have marked ere
now that albeit I am a bachelor, I am not without interest in the ladies,
and that, to speak plainly, I and a certain young serving maid belowstairs
have, ah, what ye might call - "

[ll8] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"An understanding," Ebenezer suggested impatiently. "Do I know it,
you scoundrel? D'you think I've not heard the twain of you clipping and
tumbling the nights away in your room, when you thought me asleep?
I'faith, 'tis enough to wake the dead! If my poor puking cost you an hour's
sleep last night, 'tis not the hundredth part of what I owe you! Is't she told
you this tale of a cock and a bull?"

"Aye," admitted Bertrand, "but 'twas not of her making."

'Whence came it, then? Get to the point, man! Tis a sorry matter when
a poet cannot accept an honor without suffering on the instant the slanders
of the envious, or make a harmless trope without his man's crying Popery!"

"I crave your pardon, sir," said Bertrand. " Twas no accusation, only
concern; I thought it my duty to tell ye what your enemies are saying. The
fact is, sir, my Betsy, who is a hot-blooded, affectionate lass, hath the bad
luck to be married, and that to a lackluster, chilly fellow whose only passions
are ambition and miserliness, and who, though he'd like a sturdy son to
bring home extra wages, is as sparing with caresses as with coins. Such a
money-grubber is he that, after a day's work as a clerk's apprentice in the
Customs House, he labors half the night as a fiddler in Locket's to put by
an extra crown, with the excuse 'tis a nest egg against the day she finds
herself with child. But 'sblood, 'tis such a tax on his time that he scarce sees
her from one day to the next and on his strength that he hath not the
wherewithal to roger what time he's with her! It seemed a sinful waste to
• me to see, on the one hand, poor Betsy alone and all a-fidget for want of
husbanding, and on the other her husband Ralph a-hoarding money to no
purpose, and so like a proper Samaritan I did what I could for the both of
'em: Ralph fiddled and I diddled."

"How's that, you rascal? The both of 'em! Small favor to the husband,
to bless him with horns! What a villainy!"

"Ah, on the contrary, sir, if I may say so, 'twas a double boon I did him,
for not only did I plough his field, which else had lain fallow, but seeded it
as well, and from every sign 'twill be a bumper crop come fall. Look ye,
sir, ere ye judge me a monster; the lad knew naught but toil and thankless
drudgery before and took no pleasure in't, save the satisfaction of drawing
his wage. He came home to a wife who carped and quarreled for lack o' love
and was set to leave him for good, which would've been the death of him.
Now he works harder than ever, proud as a peacock he's got a son a-building,
and his clerking and fiddling have changed from mere labor to royal sport.
As for Betsy, that was wont to nag and bark at him before, she's turned

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 119 ]

sweet as a sugar-tit and jumps to his every whim and fancy; she would not
leave him for the Duke o' York. Man and wife are both the happier fort/'

"And thou'rt the richer by a mistress that costs you not a farthing to
keep," Ebenezer added, "and on whom you may get a household of
bastards with impunity!"

Bertrand shrugged, adjusting his master's cravat.

"As't happens, yes," he admitted* "though I hear't said that virtue is its
own reward."

"Then 'twas this cuckold of a fiddler started the story?" demanded
Ebenezer. "I'll take the wretch to court!"

"Nay, 'twas but gossip he passed on to Betsy last night, who passed it
on to me this morning. He had it from the drinkers at Locket's, after all the
toasting was done and you were gone."

"Unconscionable envy and malice!" Ebenezer cried. "Do you believe it?"

"Many, sir, 'tis no concern o' mine what persuasion ye follow. I'll confess
I wondered, after Betsy told me, whether all thy hollowing and pitching
last night was not a free-for-all 'twixt you and your conscience, or some
strange Papish ceremony, for I know they've a bag of 'em for every time
o'day. B'm'faith, 'twere mere good business, methinks, to take his supersti-
tious vows for him, if that's the condition for the post. Soon or late, we all
must strike our bargains with the world. Everything hath its price, and
yours was no dear one, inasmuch as neither milord Baltimore nor any other
Jesuit can see what's in your heart. All ye need do is say him his hey-nonny-
nonnies whenever he's there to hear 'em; as for the rest of the world, 'tis
none o' their concern what office ye hold, or what it cost ye, or who got it
for ye. Keep mum on't, draw your pay, and let the Pope and the world
go hang."

"Lord, hear the cynic!" said Ebenezer. "My word on't, Bertrand, I
struck no bargain with Lord Baltimore^ nor dickered and haggled any quid
pro quos. I'm no more Papist this morning than I was last week, and as for
salary, my office pays me not a shilling."

" Tis the soundest stand to take," Bertrand nodded knowingly, "if any
man questions ye."

" 'Tis the simple truth! And so far from keeping my appointment secret,
I mean to declare it to all and sundry— within the bounds of modesty, of
course/'

"Ah, ye'll regret that!" Bertrand warned. "If ye declare the office, 'tis no
use denying ye turned Papist to get it. The world believes what it pleases."

[ 12O ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"And doth it relish naught save slander and spite and fantastical
allegation?"

" Tis not so fantastic a story/' Bertrand said, "though mind ye, I don't
say 'tis true. There's a lot goes on behind the scenes, if ye just but knew
it. More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and
proclamations!9

"And are all human motives really so despicable?"

"Aye, sir. Why do you ask?"

"Nay, nay!" Ebenezer protested. "Such libels are but the weapon of the
mediocre against the talented. Those fops at Locket's daren't allow the
legitimacy of my laureateship, inasmuch as 'twere but a declaration of their
own lack of ability. They slander me to solace themselves! As for your
cynical philosophy, that sees a plot in every preferment, methinks 'tis but
mere wishful thinking, the mark of a domestical mind, which attributes to
the world at large all the drama and dark excitement that it fails to find
in its own activity."

" Tis all above me, this philosophy/' Bertrand said. "I know only what
they say."

"Popery indeed! Dear God, I am ill of London! Fetch my traveling wig,
Bertrand; I shan't abide another day in this place!"

"Where will ye go, sir?"

"To Plymouth, by the afternoon coach. See to't my chests and trunks are
packed and loaded,, will you? 'Sheart, how shall I endure e'en another
morning in this vicious city?"

"Plymouth so soon, sir?" asked Bertrand,

"Aye, the sooner the better. Have you found a place?"

"I fear not, sir. Tis a bad season to seek one, my Betsy says, and 'tis not
every place I'd take."

"Ah well, no great matter. These rooms are hired till April's end, and
thou'rt free to use 'em if you choose. Your wage is paid ahead, and I've
another crown for you if my bags are on the Plymouth coach betimes."

"I ihank ye, sir. I would ye weren't going, I swear't, but ye may depend
on't your gear will be stowed on the coach. Marry, I'll not soon find me a
civiler master!"

"Thou'rt a good fellow, Bertrand," Ebenezer smiled. <cWere't not for
my niggard allowance, I'd freight thee to Maryland with me."

"I'faith, I've no stomach for bears and salvages, sir! An't please ye, I'll
stay behind and let my Betsy comfort me for losing ye."

"Then good luck to you," said Ebenezer as he left, "and may your son

THE SOT-WEED FACTO* [ 121 ]

be a strapping fellow. I shan't return here: I mean to waste the whole
morning buying a notebook for my voyage, rather than pass another minute
in Locket's or some other den of gossip. Haply I'll see you at the posthouse."
"Good day then, sir," Bertrand said, "and fare thee welll"

Irksome as was his false friends' slander, it soon slipped from Ebenezer's
mind once he was out of doors. The day was too fair, his spirits too high, for
him to brood much over simple envy. "Leave small thoughts to small
minds," said he to himself, and so dismissed the matter.

Much more important was the business at hand: choosing and purchasing
a notebook. Already his delicious trope of the day before, which he'd
wanted to set down for future generations, was gone from his memory; how
many others in years gone by had passed briefly through his mind, like
lovely women through a room, and gone forever? It must happen no more.
Let the poetaster and occasional dabbler-in-letters affect that careless fe-
cundity which sneers at notes and commonplace books: the mature and
dedicated artist knows better, hoards every gem he mines from the mother
lode of fancy, and at his leisure sifts the diamonds from the lesser stones.

He went to the establishment of one Benjamin Bragg, at the Sign of the
Raven in Paternoster Row— a printer, bookseller, and stationer whom he
and many of his companions patronized. The shop was a clearinghouse for
minor literary gossip; Bragg himself— a smiling, waspish, bright-eyed, honey-
voiced little man in his forties of whom it was rumored that he was a
Sodomite— knew virtually everyone of literary pretensions in the city, and
though he was, after all, but a common tradesmen, his favor was much
sought after. Ebenezer had been uncomfortable in the place ever since his
first introduction to the proprietor and clientele some years before. He had
always, until the previous day, been of at least two minds about his own
talent, as about everything else— confident on the one hand (From how
many hackle-raising ecstasies! From how many transports of inspiration!)
that he was blessed with the greatest gift since blind John Milton's and
was destined to take literature singlehandedly by the breech and stand it
upon its periwig; equally certain, on the other (From how many sloughs
of gloom, hours of museless vacancy, downright immobilities!) that .he was
devoid even of talent, to say nothing of genius; a bumbler, a stumbler, a
witless poser like many another— and his visits to Bragg's place, whose
poised habitues reduced him to mumbling ataxia in half an instant, never
failed to convert him to the latter opinion, though in other circumstances

[ 122 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

he could explain away their cleverness to his advantage. In any case, he was
in the habit of disguising his great uneasiness with the mask of diffidence,
and Bragg rarely noticed him at all.

It was to his considerable satisfaction, therefore, that when this time he
entered the establishment and discreetly asked one of the apprentices to
show him some notebooks, Bragg himself, catching sight of him, dismissed
the boy and left the short, wigless customer with whom he'd been gossiping
in order to serve him personally.

"Dear Mr. Cooke!" he cried. "You must accept my felicitations on your
distinction!"

"What? Oh, indeed/' Ebenezer smiled modestly. "However did you hear
oft so soon?"

"So soon!" Bragg warbled. "Tis the talk o' London! I had it yesterday
from dear Ben Oliver, and today from a score of others. Laureate of
Maryland! Tell me," he asked, with careful ingenuousness, "was't by Lord
Baltimore's appointment, as some say, or by the King's? Ben Oliver declares
'twas from Baltimore and vows he'll turn Quaker and seek the same of
William Penn for Pennsylvania!"

"'Twas Lord Baltimore honored me," Ebenezer replied coolly, "who,
though a Romanist, is as civil a gentleman as any I've met and hath a
wondrous ear for verse."

"I am certain oft," Bragg agreed, "though I've ne'er met the man.
Prithee, sir, how came he to know your work? We're all of us a-flutter to
read you, yet search as I may I can't find a poem of yours in print, nor hath
anyone I've asked heard so much as a line of your verse. Marry, I'll confess
it: we scarce knew you wrote any!"

"A man may love his house and yet not ride on the ridgepole," observed
Ebenezer, "and a man may be no less a poet for not declaiming in every
inn and ordinary or printing up his creatures to be peddled like chestnuts
on London Bridge."

"Well said!" Bragg chortled, clapped his hands, and bounced on his heels.
"Oh, pungently put! 'Twill be repeated at every table in Locket's for a
fortnight! Ah, 'slife, masterfully put!" He dabbed his eyes with his handker-
chief. "Would you tell me, Mr. Cooke, if t be not too prying a question,
whether Lord Baltimore did you this honor in the form of a recommenda-
tion for King William and the Governor of Maryland to approve, or
whether 'tis still in Baltimore's power to make and fill official posts? There
was some debate on the matter here last evening."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 123 ]

"I daresay there was," Ebenezer said. "Tis my good fortune I missed
it. Is't your suggestion Lord Baltimore would willfully o'erstep his authority
and exercise rights he hath no claim to?"

"Oh, Heav'n forbid!" cried Bragg, wide-eyed. " Twas the farthest thing
from my mind, sir! Oh, 'sheart! 'Twas a mere civil question, b'm'faithl No
slight intended!"

"So be't. Let us have done with questions now, lest I miss the Plymouth
coach. Will you show me some notebooks?"

"Indeed, sir, at once! What sort of notebook had you in mind?"

"What sort?" repeated Ebenezer. "Are there sorts of notebooks, then? I
knew't not. No matter— any sort will serve, I daresay. 'Tis but to take notes
in."

"Long notes, sir, or short ones?"

"How? What a question! How should I know? Both, I suppose!"

"Ah. And will you take these long and short notes at home, sir, or while
traveling?"

"Ffaith,, what difference to you? Both, I should think. A mere silly note-
book is all my craving."

"Patience, sir; 'tis only to make certain I sell you naught but fits thy
need. The man -who knows what he needs, they say, gets what he wants;
but he who knows not his mind is forever at sixes and sevens and blames
the blameless world fort."

"Enough wisdom, I beg you," Ebenezer said uncomfortably. "Sell me a
notebook fit for long or short notes, both at home and abroad, and have
done with't."

"Very well, sir," Bragg said. "Only I must know another wee thing."

"I'faith, 'tis a Cambridge examination! What is't now?"

"Is't thy wont to make these notes always at a desk, whether at home or
abroad, or do you jot 'em down as they strike you, whether strolling, riding,
or resting? And if the latter, do you yet ne'er pen 'em in the public view,
or is't public be damned, ye'll write where't please you? And if the latter,
would you have 'em think you a man whose taste is evidenced by all he
owns; who is, you might say,, in love with the world? A Geoffrey Chaucer?
A Will Shakespeare? Or would you rather they took you for a Stoical
fellow, that cares not a fig for this vale of imperfections, but hath his eye
fixed always on the Everlasting Beauties of the Spirit: a Plato, I mean, or a
Don John Donne? 'Tis most necessary I should know."

Ebenezer smote the counter with his fist. "Damn you, fellow, thou'rt

r 12A ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

pulling my leg for fair! Is't some wager you've made with yonder gentle-
man, to have me act the fool for him? Marry, 'twas my retching hate of
raillers and hypocrites that drove me here, to spend my final London morn
sequestered among the implements of my craft, like a soldier in his armory
or a mariner in the ship chandler's; but I find no simple sanctuary even
here. By Heav'n, I think not even Nero's lions were allowed in the
dungeons where the martyrs prayed and fortified themselves, but had to
stay their hunger till the wretches were properly in the arena. Will you deny
me that small solace ere I take ship for the wilderness?"

"Forbear, sir; do forbear," Bragg pleaded, "and think no ill of yonder
gentleman, who is a perfect stranger to me."

"Very well. But explain yourself at once and sell me a common notebook
such as a poet might find useful who is as much a Stoic as an Epicurean."

"I crave no more than to do just that," Bragg declared. "But I must
know whether you'll have the folio size or the quarto. The folio, I might
say, is good for poets, inasmuch as an entire poem can oft be set on facing
pages, where you can see it whole."

"Quite sound," Ebenezer acknowledged. "Folio it is/7

"On the other hand, the quarto is more readily lugged about, particularly
when thou'rt walking or on horseback."

"True, true," Ebenezer admitted.

"In the same way, a cardboard binding is cheap and hath a simple
forthright air; but leather is hardier for traveling, more pleasing to behold,
and more satisfying to own. What's more, I can give ye unruled sheets,
such as free the fancy from mundane restraints, accommodate any size of
hand, and make a handsome page when writ; or ruled sheets, which save
time, aid writing in carriages or aboard ships, and keep a page neat as a
pin. Finally, ye may choose a thin book, easy to cany but soon filled, or a
fat one, cumbersome to travel with but able to store years of thought 'twixt
single covers. Which shall be the Laureate's notebook?"

" 'Sbodikins! I am wholly fuddled! Eight species of common notebook?"

"Sixteen, sir; sixteen, if I may," Bragg said proudly. "Ye may have

A thin plain cardboard folio,

A thin plain cardboard quarto,

A thin plain leather folio,

A thin ruled cardboard folio,

A fat plain cardboard folio,

A thin plain leather quarto,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 125 ]

A thin ruled cardboard quarto,

A fat plain cardboard quarto,

A thin ruled leather folio,

A fat ruled cardboard folio,

A fat plain leather folio,

A thin ruled leather quarto,

A fat ruled cardboard quarto,

A fat plain leather quarto,

A fat ruled leather folio, or

A fat ruled leather quarto."

"Stop!" cried Ebenezer, shaking his head as though in pain. "Tis the
Pit!"

"I may say also I'm expecting some lovely half-moroccos within the week,
and if need be I can secure finer or cheaper grades of paper than what
I stock."

"Have at thee, Sodomite!" Ebenezer shouted, drawing his short-sword.
"Tis thy life or mine, for another of thy evil options* and I am lost!"

"Peace! Peace!" the printer squealed, and ducked under his serving-
counter.

"Peace Peace we'll have do I reach thee," Ebenezer threatened; "nor no
mere pair of pieces, either, b'm'faith, but sixteen count!"

"Stay, Master Laureate," urged the short, wigless customer; he came from
across the shop, where he'd been listening with interest to the colloquy,
and placed his hand on Ebenezer's sword arm. "Calm your wrath, ere't
lead ye to blight your office."

"Eh? Ah, to be sure," sighed Ebenezer, and sheathed his sword with
some embarrassment. " 'Tis the soldier's task to fight battles, is't not, and
the poet's to sing 'em. But marry, who dares call himself a man that will not
fight to save his reason?"

"And who dares call himself reasonable," returned the stranger, "that
will so be swayed by's passions as to take arms against a feckless shopkeeper?
Tis thy quandary, do I see't aright, that all these notebooks have their
separate virtues, yet none is adequate, inasmuch as your purposes range
'twixt contradictories."

"You have't firmly," Ebenezer admitted.

"Then 'tis by no means this poor knave's fault, d'ye think, that he gives
ye options? He's more to be praised than braised for't. Put by your anger,
for Anger begins with folly and ends with repentance; it makes a rich man

[ 126 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

hated and a poor man scorned, and so far from solving problems, only
multiplies 'em. Follow rather the sweet light of Reason, which like the
polestar leads the wise helmsman safe to port through the unruly seas of
passion."

"Ah, you chasten me, friend," said Ebenezer. "Out with you, Ben Bragg,
and never fear: I'm my own man again."

" 'Sheart, thou'rt a spirited fellow for a poet!" Bragg exclaimed, reappear-
ing from under the counter.

"Forgive me."

"There's a good fellow!" said the stranger. "Anger glances into wise men's
breasts, but rests only in the bosoms of fools. Heed no voice but Reason's."

"Good counsel, I grant thee," Ebenezer said. "But I'll own it passeth
my understanding how Solomon himself could reconcile opposites and
make a plain book elegant or a fat book thin. Not all the logic of Aquinas
could contrive it!"

"Then look past him," said the stranger with a smile, "to Aristotle himself,
and where you find opposite extremes, seek always the Golden Mean. Thus
Reason dictates: Compromise, Mr. Cooke; compromise. Adieu."

With that the fellow left, before Ebenezer could thank him or even
secure his name.

"Who was that gentleman?" he asked Bragg.

" 'Twas one Peter Sayer," Bragg replied, "that just commissioned me to
print him some broadsides—more than that I know not,"

"No native Londoner, I'll wager. What a wondrous wise fellow!"

"And wears his natural hair!" sighed the printer. "What think ye of his
advice?"

" 'Tis worthy a Chief Justice," Ebenezer declared, "and I mean to carry
it out at once. Fetch me a notebook neither too thick nor too thin, too tall
nor too small, too simple nor too elegant. Twill be Aristotle from start
to finish!"

"Your pardon, sir," Bragg protested; "I have already named my whole
stock over, and there's not a Golden Mean in the lot. Yet I think ye might
purchase a book and alter it to suit."

"How, prithee," Ebenezer asked, looking nervously to the door through
which Sayer had made his exit, "when I know no more of bookmaking than
doth a bookseller of poetry?"

"Peace, peace!" urged Bragg. "Remember the voice of Reason."

"So be't," Ebenezer said. "Every man to his trade, as Reason hath it

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 12J ]

Here's a pound for book and alterations. Commence at once, nor let your
eye drift e'en for an instant from the polestar of Reason."

'Very good, sir," Bragg replied, pocketing the money. "Now, 'tis but
reasonable, is't not, that a long board may be sawn short, but a short board
may not be stretched? And a fat book, likewise, may be thinned, but ne'er
a thin book fattened?"

"No Christian man can say you nay," Ebenezer agreed.

"So, then," said Bragg, taking a handsome, fat, unruled leather folio from
the shelf, "we take us a great stout fellow, spread him open thusly, and
compromise him!" Pressing the notebook flat open upon the counter, he
ripped out several handfuls of pages.

"Whoa! Stay!" cried Ebenezer.

"Then," Bragg went on, paying him no heed, "since Reason tells us a
fine coat may wear shabby, but ne'er a cheap coat fine, we'll just compromise

this morocco here and there " He snatched up a letter opener near at

hand and commenced to hack and gouge the leather binding.

"Hold, there! I'faith, my notebook!"

"As for the pages," Bragg continued, exchanging the letter opener for
goose quill and inkpot, "ye may rule 'em as't please ye, with Reason as the
guide: sidewise"— he scratched recklessly across a half-dozen pages—
"lengthwise"— he penned hasty verticals on the same pages—" or what ye
will!" He scribbled at random through the whole notebook,

"'Sbody! My pound!"

"Which leaves only the matter of size," Bragg concluded: "He must be
smaller than a folio, yet taller than a quarto. Hark ye, now: methinks the
voice of Reason orders "

"Compromise!" Ebenezer shouted, and brought down his sword upon the
mutilated notebook with such a mighty chop that, had Bragg not just then
stepped back to contemplate his creation he'd surely have contemplated his
Creator. The covers parted; the binding let go; pages flew in all directions.
"Tfort for your damned Golden Mean!"

"Madman!" Bragg cried, and ran out into the street. "Oh, dear, help!
Madman!"

There was no time to lose: Ebenezer sheathed his sword, snatched up
the first notebook he spied— which happened to be lying near at hand, over
the cash drawer— and fled to the rear of the store, through the print shop
(where two apprentices looked up in wonder from their work) , and out the
back door.

: THE LAUREATE DEPARTS FROM LONDON

THOUGH SEVERAL HOURS YET REMAINED BEFORE DEPARTURE TIME, EBENE-

zer went from Bragg s directly to the posthouse, ate an early dinner, and
sipped ale restlessly while waiting for Bertrand to appear with his trunk.
Never had the prospect of going to Maryland seemed so pleasant: he longed
to be off! For one thing, after the adventure in Bragg's establishment he
was more than ever disgusted with London; for another, he rather feared
that Bragg, to whom he'd mentioned the Plymouth coach, might send men
after him, though he was certain his pound was more than adequate pay-
ment for both notebooks. And there was another reason: his heart still beat
faster when he recalled his swordplay of an hour before, and his face flushed.

'What a gesture!" he thought admiringly. "'That for your damned
Golden Mean!' Well said and well done! How it terrified the knave, f faith!
A good beginning!" He laid his notebook on the table: it was quarto size,
about an inch thick, with cardboard covers and a leather spine. "Tis not
what Fd have chosen" he reflected without sorrow, "but 'twas manfully
got, and 'twill do, 'twill do. Barman!" he called, "Ink and quill, if you
please!" The writing materials fetched, he opened the notebook in order to
pen a dedication: to his surprise he found already inscribed on the first page
B. Bragg, Printer & Stationer, Sign of the Raven, Paternoster Row, London,
1694, and on the second and third and fourth such entries as BdngZe &
Son, glaziers, for window-glass, 13/4, and /no. Eastbury, msc printing, 1/3/9

"'Sblood! Tis Bragg's account book! A common ledger!" Investigating
further he found that only the first quarter of the book had been used: the
last entry, dated that same day, read CoZ. Peter Sayer, broadsides, 2/5/0.
The remaining pages were untouched. "So be't," he smiled, and ripped out
the used sheets. ' 'Was't not my aim to keep strict account of my traffic with
the muse?" Inking his quill, he wrote across the first new page Ebenezer
Cooke, Poet & Laureate of Maryland and then observed (it being a ledger
of the double-entry variety) that his name fell in the Debit column and
his title in the Credit.

"Nay, 'twill never do," he decided, "for to call my office an asset to me
is but to call me a liability to my office." He tore out the sheet and reversed
the inscription. "Yet Poet and Laureate Eben Cooke is as untrue as the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 12Q ]

other," he reflected, "for while I hope to be a credit to my post, yet surely
the post is no liability to me. Twere fitter the thing were done sidewise
down the credit line, to signify the mutual benefit of title and man." But
before he tore out the second sheet it occurred to him that "credit" was
meaningless except as credit to somebody— and yet anything he entered to
receive it became a liability. For a moment he was frantic.

"Stay!" he commanded himself, perspiring. "The fault is not in the
nature of the world, but in Bragg's categories. I'll merely paste my commis-
sion over the whole title page."

He called for glue, but when he searched his pockets for the commission
from Lord Baltimore, he found it not in any of them.

"A'gad! Tis in the coat I wore last night at Locket's, that Bertrand hath
packed away for me!"

He went searching about the posthouse for his man, without success. But
in the street outside, where the carriage was being made ready, he was
astonished to find no other person than his sister Anna.

"Marry!" he cried, and hurried to embrace her. "People vanish and ap-
pear to me of late as in a Drury Lane comedy! How is it thou'rt in London?"

"To see thee off to Plymouth," Anna said. Her voice was no longer girlish,
but had a hard, flat tone to it, and one would have put her age closer to
thirty-five than twenty-eight years. "Father forbade it but would not come
himself, and so I stole away and be damned to him." She stepped back
and examined her brother. "Ah faith, thou'rt grown thinner, Eben! I've
heard 'twere wise to fatten up for an ocean passage."

"I had but a week to fatten," Ebenezer reminded her. During his sojourn
at Paggen's he had seen Anna not more than once a year, and he was greatly
moved by the alteration in her appearance.

She lowered her eyes, and he blushed.

"I'm looking for that great cynical servant of mine," he said gaily, turning
away. "You've not seen him, I suppose?"

"You mean Bertrand? I sent him off myself not five minutes past, when
he'd got all your baggage on the coach."

"Ah, there's a pity. I had promised him a crown fort."

"And I gave it him, from Father's money. He'll be back at St. Giles, I
think, for Mrs. Twigg hath a ferment of the blood and is not given long
to live."

"Nay! Dear old Twigg! 'Tis a pity to lose her."

They stood about awkwardly. Turning his head to avoid looking her in

[ 130 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the eye, Ebenezer caught sight of the wigless fellow of the bookstore, Peter
Saver, standing idly by the corner.

"Did Bertrand tell you aught of my preferment?" he asked cheerfully.

"Aye, he spoke oft. I'm proud." Anna's manner was distracted. "Eben
" She grasped his arm. ' Was't true, what that letter said?" Great con-
cern was evident in her face.

Ebenezer laughed, somewhat nettled at Anna's lack of interest in his
laureateship. " 'Twas true I'd got nowhere at Peter Paggen's, in all those
years. And 'twas true a woman was in my chamber."

"And did you deceive her?" his sister asked anxiously.

"I did," Ebenezer said. Anna turned away and caught her breath.

"Stay!" he cried. " Twas not at all in the way you think. I deceived her
inasmuch as she was a whore that came to me to be employed for five
guineas; but I took a great love for her and would neither lay nor pay her
on those terms."

Anna wiped her eyes and looked at him. "Is't true?"

"Aye," Ebenezer laughed. "Haply you'll judge me not a man for't, Anna,
but I swear I am as much a virgin now as the day we were born. What,
thou'rt weeping again!"

"But not for sorrow," Anna said, embracing him. "Do you know,
Brother, I had come to think since you went to Magdalene College we no
longer knew each other— but it may be I was wrong."

Ebenezer was moved by this statement, but a trifle embarrassed when
Anna squeezed him more tightly before releasing him, Passersby, including
Peter Sayer on the corner, turned their heads to look at them: doubtless
they looked like parting lovers. Yet he was ashamed at being embarrassed.
He moved closer to the coach, to prevent too gross a misunderstanding,
and took his sister's hand, at least partly to forestall further embraces.

"Do you ever think of the past?" Anna asked.

"Aye."

"What wondrous times we had! Do you remember how we used to talk
for hours after Mrs. Twigg had turned out the lamp?" Tears sprang again
to her eyes. "I'faith, I miss you, Ebenl"

Ebenezer patted her hand.

"And I thee," he said, sincerely but uncomfortably. I remember one
day when we were thirteen, you were ill in bed with a fever, and so
Henry and I went alone to tour Westminster Abbey. Twas my first whole
day apart from you, and by dinnertime I missed you so sorely I begged
Henry to take me home. But we went instead to St James's Park,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 131 ]

and after supper to Dukes Theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and 'twas far
past midnight ere we reached home. I felt ten years older for the day's
adventure and could not see for the life of me how I'd e'er be able to tell
you the whole oft. I'd had my first meal away from home, been to my first
theater, and tasted my first brandy. We talked of nothing else for weeks
but that day, and still I'd remember trifles I'd forgot to tell you. 'Twould
give me pain to think of them, and at length I came to regret ever having
gone and told Henry so, for't seemed to me you'd ne'er catch up after
that day."

"I recall it as if 'twere but last week," Anna said. "How many times
I've wondered whether you'd forgot it." She sighed. "And I never did catch
up! Query as I might, there was no getting the whole story. The awful
truth oft was, I'd not been there to see!"

Ebenezer interrupted her with a laugh. "Marry, e'en now I recall some-
thing of it I forgot to tell you! After supper at some Pall Mall tavern on
that day, I waited a half hour alone at the table while Henry went upstairs

for one reason or another " He stopped and blushed scarlet, suddenly

realizing, after fifteen years, what in all probability Henry Burlingame had
gone upstairs for. Anna, however, to his relief, showed no sign of under-
standing.

"The wine had gone to my head, and everyone looked odd to me, none
less than myself. 'Twas then I composed my first poem, in my head. A little
quatrain. Nay, I must confess 'twas no slip of memory: I kept it secret,
Heav'n knows why. I can e'en recite it now:

Figures, so strange, no GOD design' d
To be a Part of Human-kind:
"But wanton Nature . . .

La, I forget the rest. 'Sheart," he said, resolving happily to record the little
verse in his notebook as soon as he boarded the carriage, "and since then
what years we've spent apart! What crises and adventures we each have
had, that the other knows naught of! 'Tis a pity all the same you had a fever
that day!"

Anna shook her head. "I had a secret too, Eben, that Mrs. Twigg knew,
and Henry guessed, but never you nor Father. 'Twas no fever I was bedded
with, but my first monthly troubles! I'd changed from child to woman that
morning, and had the cramp oft as many women do."

Ebenezer pressed her hand, uncertain what to say. It was time to board
the coach: footmen and driver were attending last-minute details.

[ 132 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Marry, 'twill be a long time ere I see you again," he said "Belike
you'll be a stout matron with half-a-dozen children!*'

"Nay, not I," Anna said. " Twill be Mrs. Twigg's lot for me, when she
dies: an old maid housekeeper/*

Ebenezer scoffed. "Thou'rt a catch for the best of men! Could I find
your equal I'd be neither virgin nor bachelor for long/' He kissed her good-
bye, forwarded his respects to his father, and made to board the carriage,

"Stay!" Anna said impulsively.

Ebenezer hesitated, uncertain of her meaning. Anna slipped from her
finger a silver seal ring, well known to the poet because it was their only
memento of their mother, whom they had never seen; Andrew had bought
it during his brief courtship and had presented it to Anna some years past.
Equally spaced around the seal were the letters A N N E B, for Anne Bow-
yer, his fiancee, and in the center, overlapped and joined by a single cross-
bar, was a brace of beflourished A's signifying the connection of Anne and
Andrew. The complete seal looked like this:

"Prithee take this ring," Anna entreated, and looked at it musingly. M Tis
—'tis my wont to alter its significance somewhat ... but no matter, Here,
let me put it on you." She caught up his left hand and slipped the ring onto
his little finger. "Pledge me . . ." she began, but did not finish.

Ebenezer laughed, and to terminate the uncomfortable situation pledged
that inasmuch as her share of Maiden was a large part of he? dowry, he
would make it flourish.

It was time to leave. He kissed her again and boarded the carriage, taking
the seat from which he could wave to her. At the last minute the wigless
fellow, Peter Sayer, boarded the coach and took the opposite scat. A foot-
man closed the door and sprang up to his post— apparently there were to
be no other passengers. The driver whipped up the hones. Ebencxcr waved
to the forlorn figure of his twin at the posthousc door, and the carriage
pulled away.

"Tis no light matter, to leave a woman ye love," Sayer ofeitd. "Is't

thy wife, perhaps, or a sweetheart?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 1J3 ]

"Neither," sighed Ebenezer. " Tis my twin sister, that I shan't see again
till Heav'n knows when." He turned to face his companion. "Thou'rt my
savior from Ben Bragg's, I believe— Mr. Sayer?"

Sayer's face showed some alarm. ''Ah, ye know me?"

"Only by name, from Ben Bragg." He extended his hand. "I am Ebene-
zer Cooke, bound for Maryland/'

Sayer shook hands warily.

"Is Plymouth your home, Mr. Sayer?"

The man searched Ebenezer's face. "Do ye really not know Colonel
Peter Sayer?" he asked.

"Why, no." Ebenezer smiled uncertainly. "I'm honored by your com-
pany, sir."

"Of Talbot County in Maryland?"

"Maryland! I'faith, what an odd chance!"

"Not so odd," Sayer said, "since the Smoker's Fleet sails on the first.
Anyone bound for Plymouth these days is likely bound for the plantations."

"Well, 'twill be a pleasant journey. Is Talbot County near to Dorchester?"

"Really, sir, thou'rt twitting me!" Sayer cried,

"Nay, I swear't; I know naught of Maryland. 'Tis my first visit since the
age of four."

Sayer still looked skeptical. "My dear fellow, you and I are neighbors,
with only the Great Choptank between us."

"Marry, what a wondrous small world! You must pay me a call sometime,
sir: I'll be managing our place on Cooke's Point."

"And writing a deal of verse, did I hear Mr. Bragg aright."

Ebenezer blushed* "Aye, I mean to turn a line or two if I can."

"Nay, put by your modesty, Master Laureatel Bragg told me of the honor
Lord Baltimore did ye."

"Ah well, as for that, 'tis likely he got it wrong. My commission is to write
a panegyric on Maryland, but I'll not be laureate in fact till the day Balti-
more hath the Province for his own again."

"Which day/' Sayer said, "you and your Jacobite friends yearn for, I
presume?"

"Stay, now!" Ebenezer said, alarmed. "I am as loyal as you."

Sayer smiled for an instant but said in a serious tone, "Yet ye wish King
William to lose his province to a Papist?"

"I am a poet/' Ebenezer declared, almost adding and a virgin from habit;
4tl know naught of Jacobites and Papists, and care less."

[ 134] TH* SOT-WEED FACTO*

"Nor know ye aught of Maryland it seems," Sayer added* "How well do
ye know your patron?"

"Not at all, save that he is a great and generous man. I've conversed
with him but once, but the history of his province persuades me he was
done a pitiful injustice. Ffaith, the scoundrels that have fleeced and slan-
dered him! I am confident King William knows not the whole truth/*

"But you do?"

"I don't say that. Still and all, a villain is a villain! This fellow Clatbome,
that I heard of, and Ingle, and John Coode^ that led the latest insurrec-
tion "

"Did he not strike a great blow for the faith, against the Papists?" Sayer
demanded.

Ebenezer began to grow uncomfortable, "I know not where your
sympathies lie, Colonel Sayer; belike thou'rt a colonel in Coode's militia
and will clap me in prison the day we step ashore in Maryland "

"Then were't not the part of prudence to watch thy speech? Mind, 1
don't say I am a friend of Coode's, but for all ye know I may be,"

"Aye, 'twere indeed the part of prudence," Ebeneser said, a trifle fright-
ened. "You may say 'tis not always prudent to be just, and I 'tis not always
just to be prudent. I am no Roman Catholic, sirf nor antipapist either, and
I wonder whether 'tis a matter 'twist Protestants and Papists in Maryland
or 'twixt rascals and men of character, whatever their faith."

"Such a speech could get thee jailed there," Sayer smiled.

"Then 'tis proof of their injustice," Ebenezer declared, not a little
anxiously, "for Tin not on either side. Lord Baltimore strikes me as a man
of character, and there's an end on't It might be I'm mistaken,"

Sayer laughed* "Nay, thou'rt not mistaken. I was but trying your
loyalty."

'To whom, prithee? And what is your conclusion?**

"Thou'rt a Baltimore man/'

"Do I go to prison for't?"

"That may be," Sayer smiled, "but not at my hands* I am this vety mo-
ment under arrest in Maryland for seditious speech against Coode and have
been since last June."

"Nay!"

"Aye, along with Charles Carroll, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Edward
Randolph, and half a dozen other fine fellows that spoke against the black-
guard. I am no Papist either, but Charles Calvert is an old and dear friend

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 135 ]

of mine. May the day I fear to speak up against such poltroons be the last
day of my life!"

Ebenezer hesitated. "How am I to know 'tis not now thou'rt trying me,
and not before?"

"Ye can never know/' Sayer replied, "especially in Maryland, where
friends may change their colors like tree frogs. Why,, do ye know, the bar-
rister Bob Goldsborough of Talbot, my friend and neighbor for years,
deposed against me to Governor Copley? The last man I'd have thought a
turncoat!"

Ebenezer shook his head. "A man mil sell his heart to save his neck. The
picture looks drear enough, f faith!"

"Yet there's this to say for't," Sayer said, "that it makes the choice a clean
one: ye must hold your tongue with all save your conscience or else speak
your mind and take the consequences— discretion goes out the window,
and so doth compromise."

"Is this the Voice of Reason speaking?" Ebenezer asked,

"Nay, 'tis the Voice of Action. Compromise serves well enough when
neither extreme will get ye what ye want: but there are things men must
not want. What comfort is a whole skin, pray, when the soul is wounded
unto death? 'Twas I wrote Baltimore his first full account of Coode's
rebellion, and rather than live under his false Associators I left my house
and lands and came to England."

"How is it thou'rt returning? Will you not be clapped in irons?"

"That may be," Sayer said. "Howbeit, I think not. Copley's dead since
September, and Baltimore himself had a hand in commissioning Francis
Nicholson to replace him. D'ye know Nicholson?"

Ebenezer admitted that he did not.

"Well, he hath his faults— chiefly a great temper and a passion for
authority— but his ear's been bent the right way, and he'll have small use
for Coode's sort. Ere he got this post he was with Edmund Andros in New
England, and 'twas Leisler's rebellion in New York that ran him out— the
very model of Coode's rebellion in Maryland. Nay, I fear no harm from
Nicholson."

"Nonetheless, 'tis a bold resolve," Ebenezer ventured.

Sayer shrugged. "Life is short; there's time for naught but bold resolves."

Ebenezer started and looked sharply at his companion.

"What is't?"

"Nothing," Ebenezer said. "Only a dear friend of mine was wont to tell
me that, I've lost track of him these six or seven years."

[ 136 ] TOE SOT-WBED FACTOR

"Belike he made some bold resolve himself/' Sayer suggested, "though
'tis easier to recommend than do. Did ye heed his counsel?"

Ebenezer nodded. "Hence both my voyage and my laureateship,** he
said, and since they had a long ride before them he told his traveling-
companion the story of his failure at Cambridge, his brief sojourn in Lon-
don with Burlingame and his long one with Peter Paggen, the wager in
the winehouse, and his audience with Lord Baltimore, The motion of the
carriage must have loosened his tongue, for he went into considerable detail.
When he concluded with his solution to the problem of choosing a note-
book and showed him Bragg's ledger, Sayer laughed so hard he had to hold
his sides.

"Oh! Ha!" he cried- "TJurf for your golden mtanl Oh, 'sbodflcins!
Thou'rt a credit to your tutor, I swear!**

" Twas my first act as Laureate/' Ebeneser smiled, "I saw it as a kind
of crisis/'

"Marry, and managed it wondrous well! So here ye sit: virgin and poet!
Think ye the 'twain will dwell 'neath the same roof and act quarrel with
each other day and night?"

"On the contrary, they live not only in harmony but in mutual
inspiration/'

"But what on earth hath a virgin to sing of? What have ye in your ledger
there?"

"Naught save my name/* Ebenezer admitted. "I had minded to paste
my commission there, that Baltimore drafted, but it got packed in my trunk,
Yet I've two poems to copy in it from memory, when I can. The one I
spoke of already, that I wrote the night of the wager; 'tis on the subject of
my innocence."

At his companion's request Ebenezer recited the poem,

"Very good," Sayer said when it was done* "Methinks it puts your notion
aptly enough, though I'm no critic. Yet 'tis a mystery to me, what ye'fl
sing of save your innocence. Prithee recite me the other piece/*

"Nay, 'tis but a silly quatrain I wrote as a lad— the first I ever rhymed
And I've but three lines oft in my memory/"

"Ah, a pity. The Laureate's first song: 'twould fetch a price someday, Til
wager, when thou'rt famous the world o'er. Might ye heat me to the three
ye have?"

Ebenezer hesitated, "Thou'rt not baiting me?**

"Nay!" Sayer assured him. " Tis a mere natural curiosity, is't not, to
wonder how flew the mighty eagle as a fledgling? Do we not admire old

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Plutarch's tales of young Alcibiades flinging himself before the carter, or
Demosthenes shaving half his head, or Caesar taunting the Cilician
pirates? And would ye not yourself delight in hearing a childish line of
Shakespeare's, or mighty Homer's?"

"I would, right enough," Ebenezer admitted. "But will ye not judge the
man by the child? Tis the present poem alone, methinks, that matters, not
its origins,, and it must stand or fall on's own merits, apart from maker and
age."

"No doubt, no doubt," Sayer said, waving his hand indifferently, "though
this word merit's total mystery to me, What I spoke of was interest, and
whether 'tis good or bad in itself, certain your Hymn to Innocence is of
greater interest to one who knows the history of its author than to one who
knows not a bean of the circumstances that gave it birth."

"Your argument hath its merits," Ebenezer allowed, not a little im-
pressed to hear such nice reasoning from a tobacco-planter.

Sayer laughed. "A fart for thy meritl My argument hath its interest,
peradventure, to one who knows the arguer, and the history of such debates
since Plato's time."

"Yet surely the Hymn hath some certain degree of merit, and hath nor
more nor less whether he that reads it be a Cambridge don or silly footboy—
or for that matter, whether 'tis read or not."

"Belike it doth," Sayer said with a shrug. " Tis very like the schoolmen's
question, whether a falling tree on a desert isle makes a sound or no, inas-
much as no ear hears it. I've no opinion on't myself, though I'll own the
quarrel hath some interest: 'tis an ancient one, with many a mighty
implication to't."

"This interest is the base of thy vocabulary/' Ebenezer remarked, "as
merit seems to be of mine."

"It at least permits of conversation," Sayer smiled. "Prithee, which gleans
more pleasure from thy Hymn? The footboy who knows not Priam from
Good King Wenceslas, or the don who calls the ancients by their nick-
names? The salvage Indian that ne'er heard tell of chastity, or the Christian
man who's learned to couple innocence with unpopped maidenheads?"

"Marryl" Ebenezer exclaimed. "Your case hath weight, my friend, but
I confess it repels me to own the muse sings clearest to professors! 'Twas
not of them I thought when I wrote the piece."

"Nay, ye mistake me," Sayer said. " 'Tis no mere matter of schooling,
though none's the worse for a little education. Human experience is what
I mean: knowledge of the world, both as stored in books and learnt from

[ 138 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the hard text of life. Your poem's a spring of water. Master Laureate—
'sheart, for that matter everything we meet is a spring, is't not? That
the bigger the cup we bring to't, the more we fetch away, and the more
springs we drink from, the bigger grows our cup. If 1 oppose your notion
of 'merit in itself/ 'tis that such thinking robs the bank of human experi-
ence, wherein I have a considerable deposit. I will not drink with any man
who'd have me throw away my cup. In short, sir, though I am neither poet
nor critic, nor e'en a common Artium Bttccalaureus, but only a simple sot-
weed planter that hath read a book or two in's time and seen a bit o* the
wide world, yet I'm confident your poem means more to me than to you.**

"What! That are neither virgin nor poet?"

Sayer nodded. "As for the first, I have been one in my time and look on't
now from the vantage-point of experience, which ye do not. For the second,
'tis but a different view ye get as author. Nor am I the dullest of readers: I
quite appreciate the wordplays in your first quatiaia, for instance*"

"Wordplays? What wordplays?"

"Why, chaste Penelope, for one,'* Sayer said- "What better pun for a
wife plagued twenty years by suitors? Twas a clever choice!"

"Thank you," Ebenezer murmured,

"And Andromache's bouncing boy," Sayer went on, "that was pitched
from the walls of Ilium "

"Nay, 'tis grotesque!" Ebenezer protested. "I meant no such thingl**

"Not so grotesque, It hath the salt of Shakespeare,"
^ "Do you think so?" Ebenezer xeconsidercd the phrase in his mind.
"Haply it doth at that Nonetheless you read more out than I put in/*

" 'Tis but to admit/* Sayer said, "I read mom out than you read out,
which was my claim. Your poem means more to me/*

"I'faith, I've not the means to refute you!" Ebenezer declared. "If
thou'rt a true sample of my fellow planters, sir, then Maryland must be the
muse's playground, and a paradise for poets! Thou'rt indeed the very voice
and breath of Reason, and I'm honored to be your neighbor. My cup
runneth over."

Sayer smiled. "Belike it wants enlarging?"

"Tis larger now than when I left London, Thou'rt no mean teacher,**

"For fee, then, if I'm thy tutor, ye may pay me out in verse, * Sayer
replied. "The three lines that occasioned our debate."

"As you wish," Ebenezer laughed, "though Heav'n only knows what
you'll find in 'em! Twas once in a Pall Mall tavern, after my firat glass of
Malaga, I composed them, when all the world looked queer and alien/" He
cleared his throat:

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Figures, so strange, no GOD design' d
To be a Part of Human-kind:
But wanton Nature. . . .

In truth, 'tis but two and a half; I know not whither it went from there, but
the message of the whole was simply that we folk were too absurd to do
credit to a Sublime Intelligence. No puns or wordplays, that I know of."

" Tis a passing cynical opinion for a boy/' Sayer said.

"Twas just the way I saw things in my cups. Marry, that last line
teases my memory!"

Sayer stroked his beard and squinted out the window. A dusty country
lad of twelve or thirteen years, wandering idly down the road, stepped aside
and waved at them as they passed.

"Figures, so strange, no GOD designed
To be a Part of Human-kind;'

Sayer recited, and turned to smile mischievously at Ebenezer:

"Butm
Mould

Do I have't right, Eben?"

"But wanton Nature, void of Rest,
Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest.

3: THE LAUREATE LEARNS THE TRUE IDENTITY OF
COLONEL PETER SAYER

"NAY, I'GOD!" EBENEZER BLINKED, AND SHOOK HIS HEAD, AND CRANED
forward as if seeking a message on his companion's face.
"Yes, 'tis I. Shame on you, that you failed to see't, or Anna either."
"But 'sheart, Henry, thou'rt so altered I've still to see't! Wigless,

bearded "

"A man changes in seven years," Burlingame smiled. "I'm forty now,
Eben."

Ebenezer laughed distractedly and kept' shaking his head. "E'en the eyes!"
he said. "And thy way of speaking! Thy voice itself is different, and thy
manner! Are you Sayer feigning Burlingame, or Burlingame disguised as
Sayer?"

" 'Tis no disguise, as any that know the real Sayer can testify."
"Yet I knew the real Henry Burlingame," Ebenezer said, "and were't

[ 140] THE SOT-WEED PACTOfc

not that you knew my quatrain I could not say thou'rt he! I told the poem
to none save Henry, and that but once, fifteen years past.0

"As I was fetching thee home from St. James's Park," Henry added
"Twas past midnight, and the Malaga had oiled thy tongue. Yet you were
asleep ere we reached St Giles, with your head on my shoulder, were you
not?"

"Marry, so I was! I had forgot." Ebenezer reached across the carriage and
gripped Burlingame's ami. "Ah God, to think I've found you. Henry! I'd
given you up for lost!"

"Then you do believe 'tis I?"

"Forgive me my doubt; I've ne'er known a man to change so, nor had !
thought it possible/'

Burlingame raised a tutorial finger. 'The world can alter a man entirely,
Eben, or he can alter himself, down to his very essence. Did you not by
your own testimony resolve, not that you wti*, but that you'd be virgin and
poet from that moment hence? Nay, a man must alter willy-nilly in's Sight
to the grave, he is a river running seawards, that is ne'er the same from
hour to hour. What is there in the Maryland Laureate of the boy I fetched
from Magdalene College?"

"The less the better!" Ebenezer replied. "Yet I am still Eben Cooke,
though haply not the same Eben Cooke, as the Thames is Thames however
swift she flows/'

"Is't not the name alone remains? And was't Tfatmt* from the day of
creation?"

"Many, Henry, you were ever one for posing riddles! Is't the form, then,
makes the man, as the banks make the river, whate'er the name and con-
tent? Nay, I see already the objection, that form is not eternal. The man
grows stout or hunchbacked with the years, and running water cub and
shapes the banks."

Burlingpme nodded. " Tis but a change too slow for men to mark, save
in retrospect The crabbed old man recalls his spring, and records tell-
er rocks to him who knows their language— where the river tan of old,
that now runs such-a-way, 'Tis but a grossness of perception, is't not,
that lets us speak of Thames and Tigris, or even Franc* and Engfand,
but especially me and thee, as though what went by those names or others
in time past hath some connection with the present object? I'faith, for
that matter how is't we speak of objects if not that our coarse vision fails
to note their change? The world's indeed a flux, as Heraclitus declared;
the very universe is naught but change and motion."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR I 141 J

Ebenezer had attended this discourse with a troubled air, but now he
brightened. "Have you not in staring o'er the Precipice missed the Path?"
he asked.

"I do not grasp your figure."

"How is't you convinced me thou'rt Henry Burlingame, when name and
form alike were changed? How is't we know of changes too nice for our
eyes to see?" He laughed, pleased at his acuity. "Nay, this very flux and
change you make so much of: how can we speak of it at all, be it ne'er so
swift or slow, were't not that we remember how things were before? Thy
memory served as thy credentials, did it not? Tis the house of Identity,
the Soul's dwelling place! Thy memory, my memory, the memory of the
race: 'tis the constant from which we measure change; the sun. Without it,
all were Chaos right enough,"

"In sum, then, thou'rt thy memory?"

"Aye," Ebenezer agreed. "Or better, I know not what I am, but I know
that I am, and have been, because of memory. Tis the thread that runs
through all the beads to make a necklace; or like Ariadne's thread, that
she gave to thankless Theseus, it marks my path through the labyrinth of
Life, connects me with my starting place."

Burlingame smiled, and Ebenezer observed that his teeth, which had
used to be white, were yellow and carious— at least two were missing alto-
gether.

"You make a great thing of this memory, Eben."

"I'll own I'd not reflected ere now on its importance. Tis food for a
sonnet, or two, don't you think?"

Burlingame only shrugged.

"Come, Henry; sure thou'rt not piqued that I have skirted thy pit!"

"Would God you had/' Burlingame said. "But I fear me thou'rt seduced
by metaphors, as was Descartes of old."

"How is that, pray? Can you refute me?"

"What more refutation need I make of this god Memory9 than that
thou'rt forgetting something?"

"What—" Ebenezer stopped and blushed as he realized the implication
of what his friend had said.

"You did not recall sleeping on my shoulder on the way home from
Pall Mall/' Burlingame reminded him. "This demonstrates the first weak-
ness of your soul-saving thread, which is, that it hath breaks in it. There
are three others/'

"Ah, many/' Ebenezer sighed. "If that is so, I fear for my argument."

[ 142 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"You said 'twas Malaga we drank that night."

"Aye, I've a clear memory oft"

"And I that 'twas Madeira."

Ebenezer laughed, "As for that, I'd trust my memory over yours, inas-
much as 'twas my first wine, and I'd not likely forget the name oft"

"True enough/' Burlingame agreed, "if you got it aright in the first place.
But I too marked it well as your first glass and well knew Malaga from
Madeira, whereas to you the names were new and meaningless* and thus
lightly confused."

"That may be, but I am certain 'twas Malaga nonetheless."

"No matter," Burlingame declared. "The fact of the matter is, where
memories disagree there's oft no means to settle the dispute, and that's
the second weakness. The third is, that in large measure we recall whatever
we wish, and forget the rest. 'Twas not until you summoned up this quat-
rain, for example, that I recalled having slipped upstairs to a whore the
while you were composing it. My shame at leaving you thus alone, for one
thing, forced it soon out of mind."

"Ffaith, my polestar leads me on the rocks!" Ebenesser lamented. "What
is the fourth objection to't?"

"That e'en those things it holds, it tends to color," Burlingame replied,
Tis as if Theseus at every turn rolled up the thread and laid it out again
in a prettier pattern,"

"I fear me thy objections are fatal," Ebenezer said. 'They are like the
four black crows that ate up Gretel's peas, wherewith she'd marked her
trail into the forest."

"Nay, these are but weaknesses, not mortal wounds," said Burlingame.
"They don't obliterate the path but only obfuscate it, so that hy as we
might we never can be certain of t" He smiled* "Howbeit, there is yet a
fifth, that by's own self could do the job-"

" 'Slife, you'd as well uncage the rascal and let us see him plainly."

"My memory served as my credentials, as you told me," Burlingame said.
"Blurred, imperfect as it is from careless use, and thine as well the twain
agreed on points enough to satisfy you I am Burlingame, though 1 could
not prove it any other way. But suppose the thread gets lost completely,
as't sometimes doth. Suppose I'd had no tecolleetion of tny past at all?"

"Then you'd have been Colonel Sayer for all of me," Ebenezer replied.
"Or if haply you'd declared yourself my Henry, but knew no more, I'd
ne'er have credited your tale. But 'tis a rare occurrence, is't not, this total
loss of memory, and rarer yet where no other pjoof exists of one's identity?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 143 ]

"No doubt But suppose again I looked like the man who fetched you to
London, and spoke and dressed like him, and e'en was called Burlingame
by Trent and Merriweather, and fat Ben Oliver. Moreover, suppose I had
before witnesses signed the name as Burlingame was wont to sign it.
Then suppose one day I swore^I was not Burlingame at all, nor knew aught
of his whereabouts, but only a clever actor who had got the knack of
aping signatures, and had passed myself as Heniy for a lark."

'Thy suppositions dizzy me!'* Ebenezer cried.

"However strong your convictions," Burlingame went on, "you'd ne'er
have proof that I was he."

"I must own that's true, though it pains me."

"Now another case "

"Keep thy case, I beg you!" Ebenezer said. "I am cased from head to
toe already."

"Nay, 'tis to the point. Suppose today I'd claimed to be Burlingame,
for all my alteration, and composed a line to fit your quatrain— nay, a
whole life story— which did not match your own recollection; and when
you questioned it, suppose I'd challenged your own identity, and made
you out to be the clever impostor. At best you'd have no proof, would
you now?"

"I grant I would not," Ebenezer admitted. "Save my own certainty.
But it strikes me the burden of proof would rest with you, not me."

"In that case, yes. But I said at best. If I had learned aught of your
past, however, the discrepancies could be charged to your own poor posing,
and if further I produced someone very like you in appearance, 'tis very
possible the burden of proof would be on you. And if I brought a few of
your friends in on the game, or even old Andrew and your sister, to dis-
claim you, I'll wager even you would doubt your authenticity."

"Mercy, mercy!" Ebenezer cried. "No more of these tenuous hypotheses,
lest I lose my wits! I am satisfied thou'rt Henry; I swear to thee I am
Ebenezer, and there's an end on't! Such casuistical speculations lead only
to the Pit."

"True enough," Burlingame said good-humoredly. "I wished only to es-
tablish that all assertions of thee and me, e'en to oneself, are acts of faith,
impossible to verify."

"I grant it; I grant it. Tis established like the " He waved his hand

uncertainly. "Marry, your discourse hath robbed me of similes: I know of
naught immutable and sure!"

" Tis the first step on the road to Heaven," Burlingame smiled.

t 144 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"That may be," Ebenezer said, "or haply 'tis the road to Hell"

Burlingame cocked his eyebrows. " Tis the same road, or good Dante
is a liar. Thou'rt quite content that I am Burlingame?"

"Quite, I swear't!"

"And thou'rt Ebenezer?"

"I never doubted it; and still thy pupil,1 as this carriage ride hath
shown."

"Good. Another time I'll ask you what me and thee refer to, but not

now.

"No, ffaith, not now, for I've a thousand things to ask of you!**
"And I to tell," Burlingame said. "But so fantastic a tale it is» my first
concern is for thy credulity, and thus I deemed necessary all this Sophistical
discourse,"

Not long afterwards the carriage stopped at Aldeishot, for it was well
past suppertime, and the travelers had not eaten. Burlingame, therefore^
as was his habit, postponed all further conversation on the subject while
he and Ebenezer dined on cold capon and potatoes. Afterwards, having
been informed by their driver that there would be a two-hour wait for the
horses and driver which would take them on to Salisbury* Exeter, and Plym-
outh, they took seats before the fire* at Burlingame^ suggestion, with their
pipes and a quart of Bristol sherry* It had grown dark outside; a light rain
began to fall. Ebenezer waited impatiently for his friend to begin, but
Burlingame, jvhen his pipe was lighted and his glass filled, sighed a com-
fortable sigh and asked merely, "How fares your father these days, Ebea?"

4: THE LAUREATE HEARS THE TALE OF
BURLINGAME'S LATE ADVENTURES

"FATHER BE DAMNED!" EBENEZER CRIED. *i KNOW NOT WHETHER HE
lives or dies, nor greatly care till I've heard your story!"

"Yet you know who he is, alive or dead, do you not? And ia that respect,
if not some others, who you are/'

'Tray let us dismiss old Andrew for the nonce," Ebeneser pleaded, "as
he hath dismissed me. Where have you been, and what done and seen?
Wherefore the name Peter Sayer, and your wondrous alteatioas? Com-
mence the tale, and a fig for old Andrew!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 145 ]

"How dismiss him?" Burlingame asked. "'Twas he commenced my
story, what time he dismissed me."

"What? Is't that nonsense over Anna you refer to? How doth it bear
upon your tale?"

"What towering wrath!" Burlingame said. "What murtherous alarm!
I'God, the hate he bore me— I am awed by't even yetl"

"I've ne'er excused him for it," Ebenezer said shortly.

"Your privilege, as his son. But I, Eben, I excused him on the instant;
forgave him— nay, e'en admired him fort. Had he made to slay me— ah,
well, but no matter,"

Ebenezer shook his head. " 'Tis past my understanding. But say, must
I give up hope of hearing your tale?"

"Thou'rt hearing it," Burlingame declared. "Tis the pier whereon the
entire history rests; the lute-work that ushers in the song."

"So be't. But I fear me 'twill be a tadpole of a history, whose head is
greater than his body. You forgave him, then?"

"More, I loved him for't, and scurried off in shame."

"Yet 'twas a false and vicious charge he charged you!"

Burlingame shrugged. "As for that, 'twas not his justice awed me, but
his great concern for his child."

"A marvelous concern he bears us, right enough," Ebenezer said. "He
will wreck us with his concern! Suppose he'd birched her bloody, as you
told me once he threatened: would you not adore and worship such con-
cern?"

"I would kill him for't," Burlingame replied, "but love him none the less."

"Marry, thou'rt come a wondrous way from London, where I left you!
Why did you not applaud my resolution to go home with Anna, seeing
'twas pure filial solicitude that prompted it?"

"You mistake me," Burlingame said. "I'd oppose it still, and Anna's
bending to his every humor. Were I his son I'd be disowned ere now for
flying in the face of his concern; but what a priceless prize it is, Eben!
What a wealthy man I'd be, to throw away such treasure! The fellow
repines in bed for grief at losing you; he dictates the course of your life
to make you worthy of your line! Who grieves for me, prithee, or cares
a fig be I fop or philosopher? Who sets me goals to turn my back on, or
values to thumb my nose at? In fine, sir, what business have I in the
world, what place to flee from, what credentials to despise? Had I a home
I'd likely leave it; a family alive or dead I'd likely scorn it, and wander a
stranger in alien towns. But what a burden and despair to be a stranger

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

to the world at large, and have no link with history! Tis as if I'd sprung
de novo like a maggot out of meat, or dropped from the sky. Had I the
tongue of angels I ne'er could tell you what a loneliness it is!"

"I cannot fathom it," Ebenezer declared. "Is this the man that stood in
Thames Street praising Heav'n he knew naught of his forebears?"

" Twas a desperate speech"— Burlingame smiled--"like a pauper's dia-
tribe on the sinfulness of wealth. When the twain of you had gone I felt
my loneliness as ne'er before, and thought long of Captain Salmon and
gentle Melissa that raised me. Do you recall that day in Cambridge when
you asked me how I came to be called Henry Burlingame the Third?"

"Aye, and you replied 'twas the name you'd bome from birth."

"I spent some hours grousing in my chamber," Burlingame said, "and
at length I came to see this pompous name of mine as the most precious
thing I owned. Who bestowed it on me? Wherefore Burlingame Third, and
not just Burlingame?"

"'Sheart, I see your meaning!" Ebenezer said. "Tis your name that
links you with your forebears; thou'rt not wholly ex nth&o after ail! Tis
a kind of clue to the riddle!"

Burlingame nodded. "And did I not profess to be a scholar?" He refilled
his glass with Bristol sherry. "Then and there I made myself a vow," he
said, "to learn the name and nature of my father, the circumstances of
my birth, and haply the place and manner of his death; nor would I value
any business higher, but ransack the very planet in my quest till I had
found my answer or died a-searching. And search I have— i'fauth!— these
seven years. Tis the one business of my life/'

''Then marry, I must hear the tale oft, that I've waited for too long
already. Drink off your sherry and commence^ nor will I stand for inter-
ruption till the tale be done."

"As you wish/' Burlingame said. He drank the wine and filled his pipe
besides, and told the following story:

"How should a man discover the history of his parentage when he knows
not whence he came or how, or even whether the name he bears hath
any authenticity? For think not I was blind to't, Eben, that my one hope
might be a false one; what evidence had I 'twas not some jest or happen-
stance, this name of mine, or perchance some other guardian's, that nursed
me up from infancy till Captain Salmon chanced along? It wants but pluck
to vow to build a bridge, yet pluck will never build it I cast about me for
a first step, and betook myself at last to Bristol, where I thougjhtt perchance
to find some that knew at least my Captain and recalled his orphan wand

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 147 ]

—and privily, 111 own, I prayed to meet some old and trusted friend of his,
or kin, that might know the full story of my origin. Twas not unthinkable
he might have told the tale, I reasoned, if not broadcast then at least to
one or two, unless there was some mighty sin about it."

Ebenezer frowned. "Such as what? The man you've pictured me ne'er
could stoop to kidnaping."

Burlingame pursed his lips and raised and let fall his hands. "He had no
children, to my knowledge, and the yen for sons can drive a man and
woman far. Moreover, 'twould be no great matter to achieve: Many's the
anchor that's dropped at dusk and weighed ere the sun comes up. Yet
'twas not kidnaping I mainly thought of, though I would not rule it out
— more likely, if he came by me improperly, 'twas that he'd got me on some
mistress in a port of call."

"Nay," said Ebenezer. "I have indeed read that the sailor is a great
philanderer, even at times a bigamist, by reason of his occupation, but
Captain Salmon, as I picture him, had neither the youth nor the temper for
such folly, the less so for that he was no common sailor, but master of a
vessel. Twere as unlike such a man to saddle himself with a bastard as
'twould be for Solomon to prattle nonsense or a Jew to strike fair bargains."

Burlingame smiled. "Which is but to say, 'tis not out of the question.
Follow Horace if you will when making verse— /fefez'Gs Ino, perftdus Ixion,
and the rest— but think not actual folk are e'er so simple. Many's the Jew
hath lost his shirt, and saint that hath in private leaped his houseboy. A
covetous man may be generous on occasion, and Even an emmet may seek
revenge. Again, though 'twere unlike Captain Salmon to sow wild oats,
'twere not at all unlike him, if his own plot would not bear, to seek a-pur-
pose a field more fruitful. Melissa may even have pressed him to."

"A wife incite her husband to be unfaithful?"

"'Twere no breach of faith, methinks, in such a case. Howbeit, no
matter: in the first place I thought it most likely he came by me in no
such sinister fashion, but simply took him in an orphan babe as any man
might who hath a Christian heart; in the second, I cared not a straw for
the manner of my getting so I could but discover it and my getter."

"And did you?"

Burlingame shook his head. "I found three or four old people that had
known Salmon and remembered his ungrateful charge: one told me, when
I revealed my name^ 'twas grief at my loss killed the Captain, and grief
o'er his killed Melissa. I yearn to credit that story, for fear my conscience
might accuse me else of fleeing such an awful responsibility; yet there is

[ 148 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

a temper wont to twist the past into a theater-piece, mistake the reasonable
for the historical, and sit like Rhadamanthus in everlasting judgment. This
man, I tell you reluctantly, was of that temper. In any case none knew
aught of my origin save that Captain Salmon had fetched me home from
somewhere, on his vessel. I asked then, who was the Captain's closet friend,
and who Melissa's? And each of the men among them claimed to be the
former, and each of the women the latter. Finally I asked whether any
remembered who was the mate on Salmon's ship in those days; but Bristol
is a busy port, where men change ships from voyage to voyage, and 'tis
unlikely they'd have known were't but one year before instead of thirty.
Yet as often happens, in asking someone else, I hit on the answer myself,
or if not the answer at least a fresh hope: a man called Richard Hill had
been first mate on all five voyages I had made with Captain Salmon, and
'twas my impression, more from their manner with each other than from
any plain statement, that he and the Captain were shipmates of some
years' standing. 'Twas not impossible he'd been mate on that voyage ten
years before, though 'twas a long chance; and if indeed he'd been, why,
'twas certain he'd know more than I about the matter, for 'tis hard to keep
such business from a first mate under any conditions, and perhaps unwise if
he's a trusted friend to boot. Of course, for aught I knew, this Hill might
be long dead, or finding him as hard a matter as finding my father "

"I grant you, I grant you!" Ebenezer broke in. "Prithee trust me to
appreciate your obstacles without enumeration, save such as advance the
story, and tell me quickly whether you overcame them. Did you find this
Hill fellow? And had he aught to tell you?"

"You must attend the haw oft/' Burlingame said; "else thou'rt as much
a Boeotian as he that reads the Iliad no farther than the invocation, where
the end oft all is plainly told. As't happened, none of my informants re-
called for certain this Richard Hill I spoke of, but two of them, who still
were wont to stroll about the wharves, declared there was a Richard Hill
in the tobacco fleet. Yet, though he sometimes called at Bristol, they told
me he was no Bristolman, nor even an Englishman, but either a Marylander
or a Virginian; nor was he a mate, but captain of his own vessel.

"This I took as good news rather than bad. When I had satisfied myself
that neither Captain Hill nor farther news of him was to be found in
Bristol at that time, I hastened back to London,"

"Not to the plantations?" Ebenezer asked, feigning disappointment
"Tis unlike you, Henry!"

"Nay, I was ready enough to sail for America," Burlingame replied, *1>ut:

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 149 ]

'Tzs -wiser to ask at the carriage-house than to chase off down the road.
London is the very liver and lights of the sot-weed trade; it took but half
a day there to learn that Captain Hill was in fact a Marylander, from
Anne Arundel County, and master of the ship Hope, which lay at that
very moment in the Thames with other 'vessels of the fleet, discharging
her cargo. I fairly ran down to the wharf where she lay and with some
difficulty (for I had no money) contrived an interview with Captain
Hill. But I had no need to ask my great question, for immediately
upon hearing my name he enquired whether I was Avery Salmon's boy,
that had jumped ship in Liverpool. I declared I was, and when we had
done shaking our heads at my youthful folly and singing the praises of
Captain Salmon (who, however, he told me had died of tumors and not
grief), told him the purpose of my visit and besought him to give me any
information he migjht have on that head.

" 'Why/ he declared, 'I was not Avery's mate in those days, Henry. I
know what there is to know oft, and no more/

" 'And prithee what is that?'

" 'Naught but what ye know already/ said he: 'that ye was fished like
a jimmy-crab from the waves of the Chesapeake/ "

"Stay!" Ebenezer cried. "I've ne'er heard you speak oft, Henry!"

" 'Twas as new to me then as to you now/' Burlingame said. "I expressed
your surprise tenfold and assaulted Captain Hill with questions. When at
length I convinced him I was a perfect stranger to the matter,, he explained
'twas in the early part of 1654 or *55> *° the best of his memory, during
a ran up the Chesapeake from Piscataway to Kent Island, Captain Salmon's
vessel had come upon an empty canoe driven before the wind. The sailors
guessed 'twas blown from some salvage Indian and would have taken no
further note of it, save that on passing closer they heard strange cries issuing
from it. Word was sent to Captain Salmon, who ordered the vessel hove to
and sent a boat over to investigate."

"Many, Henry!" Ebenezer said breathlessly. "Was't you?"

"Aye, a lad of two or three months, stark naked and like to perish of
the cold. My hands and feet were bound with rawhide, and on my
skin, like a sailor's tattoo, was writ the name Henry Burlingame III, in
small red letters. They fetched me aboard "

"Wait, I pray you! I must assimilate these wonders,, that you drop as
light as goose-dung! Naked and tattooed, i'faithl Is't still to be seen?"

"Nay, 'tis long since faded."

"But how came you to be there? Surely 'twas some villainy!"

[150] THE SOX-WEED FACTOR

"No man knows," Burlingame said. "The canoe and the thongs where-
with I was bound bespoke salvagery, yet there's not a salvage in the country
knows his letters, to my knowledge, and my skin and scalp were whole."

"Agad!" Ebenezer cried. "What creature is't could bear such malice to
a silly babe, that not content to do him to death, must do't in such a hard
and lingering fashion?"

" Tis a mystery to this day. In any case, Captain Salmon had me clapped
under coverlets in his own cabin, where for ten days and nights I hung
'twixt here and hereafter, and fed me on fresh goat's milk. At length my
fever abated and my health returned; Captain Salmon took a fancy to me
and resolved ere his ship returned to Bristol I would be his son. More than
this my Captain Hill knew naught, and though 'twas volumes more than
erst Fd known, yet so far from laying my curiosity, it but pricked him up
the more, I offered then and there to join the Hope's crew for the voyage
back to Maryland, where I meant to turn the very marshes inside out for
clues."

"Twas a desperate resolve, was't not?** Ebenezer smiled* "The more
since you knew not whence the canoe had blown, or where the ship o'er-
took it."

"It was indeed," Burlingame agreed, "though a desperate resolve may
sometimes meet success* In any case, 'twas that or give over my quest. I
had a fortnight's time ere the Hope sailed, and like a proper scholar I ran-
sacked the records of the Customs-house, My end this time was to search
out all the Burlingames in Maryland, for once in the Province I meant
to make my way to each, by fair means or foul, and dig for what I sought
Who could say but that one among their number mi^ht have sired me?"

"Well," said Ebenezer, "and did you find any?"

Burlingame shook his head* 'To the best of my knowledge not a man
or woman of that name lives now in the Province,, or hath ever rince its
founding. Next I resolved to search the records of all the other provinces
in like manner, working north and south in turn from Maryland. The
task was rendered harder by the many changes in grants and charters over
the years, and farther by the fear of civil war, which ever works a wondrous
ruin to the custom clerk's faith in his fellow man. I started on Virginia,
working back from the current year, but ere I'd got past Cromwell's time
my fortnight was run, and off I sailed to Maryland/' Burlingame smiled
and tapped ashes from his pipe, "Had the wind held bad another fortnight,
Fd have found somewhat to fan my hopes enormously. As 'twas, I waited
near two years to find it"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [151]

was that? News of your father?"

"Nay, Eben— of that gentleman I know no more today than I knew then,
nor of my mother or myself/'

"Ah, 'twere better you'd not told me that," Ebenezer declared, clucking
his tongue, "for it spoils the story. What man could pleasure in a quest,
or the tale of one, that he knew ere he launched it was in vain?"

"Would you have me forego the rest?" Burlingame asked. "The news
was merely of my grandfather, or so I believe— I've come to know some-
what of that fellow, at least."

"Ah, thou'rt teasing me, then!"

Burlingame nodded and stood up. "I know no more of my father than
before, but 'tis not to say I'm no nearer knowing. No indeed. Howbeit,
the tale shall have to keep."

"What! Thou'rt not affronted, Henry?"

"Nay, nay," Burlingame replied. "But I hear our driver harnessing the
team in the yard. Stretch your legs a bit, lad, and relieve thyself ere we

go-"

"But surely you'll take up the tale again?" Ebenezer pleaded.

Burlingame shrugged, " 'Twere better you slept if you can. If not, why
then 'tis good to have a tale to wait the dawn with."

At that moment the new driver burst in, cursing the rain,, and told the
travelers to make ready for departure. Accordingly they went outside,
where a high March wind was whipping the light rain into spray.

5: BURLINGAME'S TALE CONTINUED, TILL ITS TELLER
FALLS ASLEEP

ONCE SETTLED IN THE CARRIAGE FOR THE SECOND LEG OF THEIR JOURNEY,

Ebenezer and Burlingame tried to sleep, but found the road too rough.
Despite their weariness, a half hour of pitching and bouncing persuaded
them the attempt was vain, and they gave it up.

"Fie on it," Ebenezer sighed. "Time enough to rest in the grave, as
Father says/*

"True enough," Burlingame agreed, "though to put it off too long is
but to get there the sooner."

At Ebenezer's suggestion they filled and lit their pipes. Then the poet

[ 152 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

declared, "As for me, I welcome the postponement. Were my bladder full
of Lethean dew instead of Bristol sherry, I still could ne'er forget the tale
you've told me, nor hope to sleep till I've heard it out"

"Thou'rt not bored with it?"

"Bored! Saving only the history of your travels with the gypsies, which
you told me years ago in Cambridge, I ne'er have heard such marvels!
Tis well I know thee a stranger to pervarication, else 'twere hard to credit
such amazements."

"Methinks then I had best leave off," Burlingame said, "for no man
knows another's heart for certain, and what I've said thus far is but a tuning
of the strings, as't were."

"Prithee strike 'em, then, without delay, and trust me to believe you."

'Very well. 'Tis not so deadly long a story, but I must own 'tis a passing
tangled one, with much running hither ^ad thither and an army of names
to bear in mind."

"The grapes are no fewer on a tangled vin^ Ebenezer replied, and
Burlingame without further prelude resumed his tale:

"Twould have pleased Dick Hill well enough," he said, "to keep me
in his crew, for a week aboard caused all my sailor's craft, which I'd not
rehearsed for over fifteen years, to spring to mind. But once in Maryland
I left his vessel and, not wishing to bind myself to one location by teach-
ing, I took a post on Hill's plantation,"

"Was't not equally confining?" Ebenezer asked.

"Not for long, I began by keeping his books— for 'tis a rare planter there
can do sums properly. Soon I so gained his confidence that he trusted me
with the entire management of his sot-weed holdings on the Severn, de-
claring that though 'twas too considerable a business to let go, yet he had
small love for't, and had rather spend his time a-sailoring "

"I'faith, then thou'rt a Maryland sot-weed planter before me! I must
hear how you managed it."

"Another time," Burlingame replied, "for here the story makes sail and
weighs its anchor. Twas 1688, and the provinces were in as great a ferment
as England over Papist and Protestant. In Maryland and New England
trouble was particularly rife: Baltimore himself and most of the Maryland
Council were Catholics, and both the Governor and Lieutenant Governor
of New England— Sir Edmund Andros and Francis Nicholson— ww also
known to be no enemies of King James. The leader of &e Maryland
rebels was one John Goode— -"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Aye, I had that name from Baltimore," Ebenezer said. "He is the false
priest that snatched the government/'

"An extraordinary fellow, Eben, I swear't! Haply you'll meet him, for
he's still at large. His counterpart in New York was Jacob Leisler, who
had designs on Nicholson. Now it happened that winter that Leisler came
to Maryland for the purpose of conniving with Coode. Word had just
reached us of King William's landing, and 'twas their design to strike to-
gether, the one at St. Mary's, the other at New York. To be brief, Captain
Hill got wind oft and sent me to New York in January, ere Leisler returned,
to warn Nicholson."

"Then Captain Hill is a Papist?"

"No more than you or I," Burlingame replied. " Twas not a matter of
faith, in Maryland. Old Coode is no more for William than for James:
'tis government itself he loathes, and any kind of orderl Leisler's but a fop
beside him."

"May I never meet this Coode!" said Ebenezer. "Did you reach New
York?"

"Aye, and Nicholson swore like a cannoneer at the news I brought him.
He himself had come to Andros in '86 as captain of an Irish Papist troop,
and in New York he'd celebrated the birth of James's son; he knew well
the rebels marked him for a Romanist and would lose no chance to turn
him out. He tried in vain to keep the news suppressed, and inasmuch as
Dick Hill had placed me at his service, he sent me on to Boston to warn
Andros. I gained the confidence of both men, and at my own request
spent the next few months as private messenger betwixt them— my virtue
being that I was not a member of their official family and hence could
move with ease among the rebels. Nay, I will own I more than once took
it upon myself to pass as one of their number, and thus was able on oc-
casion to report their doings to the Governor."

"But thou'rt fearless, Henry!"

"Eh? Ah well, fearless or no, I did the cause of order small good. The
rebels seized Andros that spring, as soon as they heard of William's progress,
and clapped him in the Boston jail. In New York they spread a tale that
Nicholson meant to fire the town, and on the strength of it Leisler mustered
force enough to take the garrison."

"What of Nicholson? Did he escape?"

"Aye," said Burlingame. "In June he fled by ship for London, and for
all Leisler called him a privateer, he got back safely."

[ 154] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Safely!" Ebenezer cried. "Was't not a case of frying pan to fire, to See
from Leisler into William's arms?"

Burlingame laughed. "Nay, Eben, Old Nick is not so simple a fool as
that,, as you shall see betimes."

"Well, what of thee, Henry? Did you make your way back to Maryland?"

"Nay again, for that were a leap to the fire indeed! Twas in July that
Coode made his play, and by August had the Governor's Council besieged
in the Mattapany blockhouse. Nay, I stayed behind in New England— first
in New York and then, when Nicholson was safely out, in Boston. My
design was to get Sir Edmund Andros out of Castle Island prison.*'

"B'm'faith!" said Ebenezer, " Tis a tale out of Esquemeling!"

"In more ways than .one," Burlingame replied with a smile* "There lay
in Boston harbor an English frigate, the Ro$#, designed to guard the local
craft from pirates. John George, her captain, was friend enough of Andros
that the rebels held him hostage, lest he bombard the town for the
Governor's release. Twas my wish to do exactly that, if need be, and spirit
him off to France aboard the Ro$0."

"However did you manage it?"

"I didn't, though 'twas no fault of my plan, I found nie a friend of
Captain George's named Thomas Pound, a pilot and mapmaker, who was
ready for a price to show his loyalty to Andros. The Governor escaped,
and five days later we slipped out of the harbor into Massachusetts Bay,
put on the guise of pirates, and commenced to harass the fishing fleet/'

"'Sbodyl"

"Twas our intention so to nettle them that at last they'd send out
Captain George in the Row frigate to reduce us; then we'd sail to Rhode
Island, pick up Andros, and set our course for France. But ere we'd brought
them to such straits, word reached us Andros was already recaptured and
on his way to England."

"In any case," Ebenezer said, "'twas a worthy attempt/'

"Belike it was, to start with," Burlingame replied. "But as't turned out,
when Tom Pound learned 'twas all for naught, he was in a pickle: he
could not sail into Boston harbor lest he be hanged for a pirate; nor could
he cross to France for lack of provision. The upshot of it was, we turned
to doing in earnest what before we'd feigned/'

"Nay, f God!"

"Aye and we did; turned pirate, and prowled the northern coast for prey/'

"But marry, Henry— you were with them?"

" Twas that or be thrown to the fishes, Eben. Aye, I fought along with

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ X55 ]

the rest nor can I say in truth I loathed it, though I felt it wrong. There
is a charm in outlawry that the good man little dreams of. ... Tis a
liquor "

"I pray you were not long drunk with it!" Ebenezer said. "It seems a
perilous brew."

"Tis no pap for sucklings, I must own. For full two months Pound
robbed and plundered, though he seldom got aught for his pain save salt
pork and fresh water. In October he was set oti by a Boston sloop off
Martha's Vineyard, and every soul aboard killed or wounded. I, thank
Heav'n, had made my escape some weeks before, in Virginia, and inasmuch
as I'd assumed another name throughout my stay in New England, I little
feared detection. I made the best oft back to Maryland and rejoined Dick
Hill in Anne Arundel, who'd long since given me up for dead. I was the
more anxious to leave Pound for that John Coode knew Captain Hill for
an enemy and was sure to work him some injury ere long. Moreover, I had
another reason, more selfish, it may be, but no less pressing: I had word
that there were Burlingames in Virginia!"

"Nay, 'tis marvelous!" cried Ebenezer. "Kin of thine?"

"That I knew not, nor whether any were yet alive; I had it only that
a Burlingame— in sooth .a Henry Burlingame— was among the very first
to settle in that dominion, and I meant to find excuse to go there and
make enquiries."

"How ever came you to hear oft, while you sailed willy-nilly o'er the
ocean? Tis of the stature of a miracle!"

"No miracle, or 'tis an odd God worked it. The tale is no marvel of
brevity, Eben."

"Yet it must be told," Ebenezer insisted.

Burlingame shrugged. "As you wish. Twas while I was with Pound, at
the height of his pirating. Our usual prey was small merchantmen and
coasting vessels; we would overhaul them, steal what pleased us, and turn
'em loose, offering hurt to none save those who made to resist us. But
once when a nor'easter ha<J blown us into Virginian waters we came upon
2n ancient pinnace at the mouth of the York River, bound up the Chesa-
peake, which, when we had turned out all her crew for looting, we found
to carry three passengers besides: a coarse fellow of fifty years or so; his
wife, who was some years younger; and their daughter, a girl not yet turned
twenty. She was an uncommon tasty piece, by the look of her, dark-haired
and spirited, and her mother not much less. At the sight of them our men
put by all thought of plunder, which had in truth been lean, and made to

[156] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

swive the twain of 'em then and there. Captain Pound durst not say them
nay, albeit he was himself opposed to violence, for such was their ferocity,
having seen nor hide nor hair of woman, as't were, since we sailed from
Boston, they'd have mutinied on the spot. And had I made the smallest
move to stay them, they'd have flung me in an instant to the fishes!

'In a trice the ruffians stripped 'em and fetched 'em to the rail Tis e'er
the pirates' wont to take their captives at the rail, you know, whether bent
on't backwards or triced hand to foot o'ertop. A mate of mine saw a maid
once forced by thirteen brigands in the former manner, with the taffrail at
the small of her back, till at last they broke her spine and heaved her over.
Tis but to make the thing more cruel, methinks, they do it thus; Captain
Hill once told me of an old French rogue he'd met in Martinique, that
swore no woman pleased him save when staring at the sharks who'd have
her when the rape was done, and that having once tasted such refined
delights he ne'er could roger mistresses ashore "

"No more, I pray you!" Ebenezer cried* "Tis not a history of the
salvagery I crave, but news of the hapless victims."

"Thou'rt overly impatient, then/* Burlingame said mildly. The vilest
deed hath a lesson in it for him who craves to learn. Howbeit, where did
I leave the women?"

"At the ship's rail, with their virtue in extremis.*'
"Ah, indeed, 'twas a bad hour to be female, for sixteen men lined up to
ravage 'em. The husband all the while was begging mercy for himself, with
never a word for the women, and the wife resisting with all her strength;
but the girl, when she saw the pirate's design, spoke quickly to her mother
in French, which none aboard could ken save me, and she made no re-
sistance, but asked the sailors calmly, with a French cast to her voice, which
they had more use for, her chastity or a hundred pounds apiece? At first the
men ignored her, so taken were they by the sight of her unclothed.
But all the way to the tail she pled her case-or rather posed her offer,
for her voice was cold and merchantlike. She was of French nobility, she
declared, and her mother likewise, and should they meet with injury the
entire crew would surely hang fort; but if they were set free unscathed, every
man aboard would have a hundred pounds within the week,

"Here I saw a chance to aid them, if I could but stay the pirates' lust a
moment. To that end I joined their fondling-even pushed some others
aside and forced her to the rail myself, as if to take first place-but
then delayed, and when she made again her offer I cried, 'Hold back,
mates, and let us hear the wench out ere we caulk her. Tis many a tart

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 157 3

we could have with a hundred pounds.' I reminded them further of our
plan to cross to France when we'd had our fill of pirating, and questioned
whether 'twere prudent so to imperil our reception there. My chief intention
was to stay them for a time at least and make them reflect, for reflection is
a famous foe of violence— 'tis a beast indeed who rapes on second thought!
So far did the strategem succeed, that the men began to jeer and scoff at
the proposal, but made no farther move for the nonce.

" 'How is't ye ladies of the court be sailing on such a privy as this?'
one asked, and the daughter replied they were not rich, but had only wealth
enough to pay their promised ransom and would be paupers after. Another
asked profanely of the mother, How was't a noblewoman thought no
better of her noble arse than to wed it to that craven lout her husband?
This I thought a sharper question, for he was indeed a coarse and common
tradesman, by the look of him. But the daughter $poke rapidly in French,
and the lady replied, that her husband came from one of Virginia's grand-
est families. To which the daughter added, If you must know, 'twas a
marriage of convenience,' and went on to say in effect,, that even as her
father had bought her mother's honor with his estate, so now she would
buy it back from us, for that same estate. The men took this merrily and
heaped no end of ridicule upon the husband, who was like to beshit him-
self with fright upon the deck. They were now of half a mind to swive
and half to take the hundred pounds, but scarce knew whether or not
to credit the women's story.

"Now you must know that 'twas my wont whenever I met a stranger
to enquire of him, Had he ever known a wight by name of Burlingame?
And would explain, I had a friend called Henry Burlingame Third, who
greatly wished to prove he was no bastard. All the men aboard had got
accustomed to't, and made it their jest to speak amongst themselves of
Henry Burlingame Third as some grand fellow whom all must know. For
this reason, when the lady had made her speech a wag amongst us said,
'If he be a great Virginia gentleman, then surely he must know Sir Henry
Burlingame, the rtoblest Virginian that ever shat on sot-weed.' And he
added that if they knew him not they must needs be impostors, and to
the rail with 'em. At this methought the game was done,, inasmuch as 'twas
but a fool's test, to give excuse for swiving. But the maid replied, she did
indeed know of a Henry Burlingame of Jamestown, that had come thither
with the first settlers and declared himself a knight, and she went on to
say, by way of proof, that 'twas much doubted in her circle whether he
was in truth of noble origin.

[ 158 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"At this the men were much surprised, none more than myself, and I
resolved to risk my life, if need be, to spare theirs so I might query them
farther on this head. I declared to the men that all the wench had said
of Burlingame was true, and that for my part I believed the whole of
her tale and was ready to trade her maidenhead for a hundred pounds.
The greater part of the men seemed ready enough to do the same, now their
first ardor was cooled— the more for that our pirating ere then had yielded
little profit. Captain Pound raised then the question of hostages, and it was
resolved that one of their number must remain behind till the ransom was
paid, and forfeit life and honor if 'twere not At this, mother and daughter
spoke briefly in French, after which each pleaded to be left as hostage,
so that the father might be spared,"

44 'Sheart, what solicitude!" Ebenezer cried 'The wretch merited no such
affection!"

Burlingame laughed, "So't appeared to all the crew save me, who followed
clearly what was said. Know, Eben, that these fine women were bald
impostors. The daughter had conceived the ruse and told it to her mother
in French. And when the matter of hostages arose, the mother had said
Tray God they will take Harry, for then we'd be quit of him for fair, and
not a penny poorer/ And the maiden's brave reply was, * Tis sure they will
take thee or me for swiving, unless we persuade them of his value/ 'FoghP
had cried the mother. The beast hath not the value of bou&m#rdef~~
which is to say, the droppings of a billy goat To this the maid replied,
that such exactly were her sentiments, and the only recourse was to offer
themselves and plead for his release relying on our gullibility.

"The men at first ignored the bait, until I asked the ladies Wherefore
their devotion, seeing he was such a craven brute, who had shown no con-
cern for them at all what time we made to swive them, but blubbered
only for himself? To which the maid replied, that though 'twas true he
cared naught for them and had liefer part with both than lose ten crown,
yet they did adore him as foolish women will, and would perish ere they
saw him injured. The husband was so entirely astonished by this speech,
that at first he could not speak for rage and tenor, and ere he could collect
himself I declared that clearly he was not to be trusted ashore but must
be our hostage, and the ladies sent for the ransom, inasmuch as their de-
votion to him assured their return. The men were most reluctant to set
the wenches free, but Captain Pound saw reason in my aiguznent, and
ordered it so. The fellow was sent below in chains, the ladies fetched new
clothing from their chests, and a boat was made ready to cany them
ashore; but ere it left I got the Captain's ear in secret, aad implored him

THE SOT-WEEI> FACTOR [ 159]

to send me with them to guarantee their return, inasmuch as I could under-
stand their tongue, unknown to them, and would thus be forewarned of
any treachery. He was loath to let me go, but at length I prevailed upon
him, and rowed off with the ladies in a longboat. The plan was that Pound
should go a-pirating for some weeks and come again to the Capes where I
would rejoin him at the end of September. Moreover, to quiet the suspicions
of the crew, and their envy of my lot, I declared to them aside that I would
have the women themselves bring the ransom aboard, which once secured,
they could be swived till the rail gave way!"

"Henry!" Ebenezer exclaimed. "Can't be that "

"Hold on/* Burlingame interrupted, "till the tale is done. We were put
ashore near Accomac, on Virginia's Eastern Shore, whence we were to start
our journey to the ladies' home. Twas dark when we landed, for we feared
detection, and we resolved to go no farther until dawn, but make a fire
upon the beach wherewith to warm ourselves. As we watched the pirates
make sail and get under way in the moonlight, both women wept for very
joy, and the mother said, in French, 'God bless you, Henrietta; you have
rid us of .the pirates and your father in a single stroke!" The maid replied,
'Rather bless this fellow with us, who is so wondrous stupid to believe my
lies/ Indeed,' said the mother. 'Who'd have looked for such a fool 'neath
such a handsome skin?' At this they laughed at their boldness, little dream-
ing I could grasp their every word, and to carry the sport yet farther the
maid declared, 'Aye, in sooth he is a pretty fellow, mother, such as you
nor I have never spent a night with/ 'Nor would ever/ said the other,
Tiad we not got shed of Harry. I must own that had he made the threat
alone, I'd have let him have his rape and saved our money. Yet I'd not
have wished thee touched/ 'Oh la/ the maid replied, 'think not I plan to
lose a penny: the handsome wretch will fall asleep anon, and we shall
either flee or do him to death. As for my maidenhead, 'tis but a champagne
cork to me, which must be popped ere the pleasantries commence/ And
looking me in the eye, she said for a tease, 'What say you, fellow: veux-tu
&tre man tire-bouchon? Eh? Veux-tu me vriller want que je te tue?' "

"I know not the tongue/' said Ebenezer, "but the sound is far from
chaste."

"Shame on you, then, that you have not learned it," Burlingame scolded.
" Tis a marvelous tongue for wooing in. I cannot tell how fetching 'twas
to hear such lewdness spoke in such sweet tones. 'Poingonne-tu mon petit
I hear't yet, i'faith, and sweat and shiver! I saw no need to carry

the deception farther, and so replied in faultless Paris French, ' Twill be
an honor, mademoiselle et madame, nor need you kill me after, for your

[ ifo ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

joy at leaving those brigands behind doth not exceed my own/ They had
like to perish of astonishment and shame on hearing me, the maid es-
pecially; but when I explained how I had come to be among the pirates,
and what it was I sought, they were soon pacified— nay, cordial, even more
than cordial. They could scarce leave off expressing gratitude, and, seeing
the cat was out of the bag, we spent the night a-sporting on the sand."

"A pretty tale indeed, if not a virtuous," Ebenezer said. "But did you
learn no more of that old Burlingame, for whom you'd saved the ladies?"

"Aye," said Burlingame. "That same night I queried them whether 'twas
but a fiction they'd contrived regarding Burlingame. And the maid replied
'twas no fiction at all, that her father was a great pretender to distinction,
who, though he was in fact a bastard, was much concerned to glorify his
lineage and was forever running hither and thither for ancient records,
which his daughter had to search for the family name. Twas for just that
cause they'd made the trip to Jamestown, where 'mid numerous musty pa-
pers she'd found what looked to be some pages of a journal writ by one
Henry Burlingame. Howbeit, she gave it but a cursory reading, seeing it
made no mention of her family, and recalled only that it spoke of some
journey or other from Jamestown; that Captain John Smith was the leader;
and that there seemed some ill feeling 'twixt him and the author of the
journal Past that she'd read no more nor could remember aught Twas
not long ere I'd had my fill of amorosities— for thirty-five hath no great
stamina in such matters— and fell asleep beside the fire. When the sun
aroused me in the morning I found the women gone, not have I seen
them since. Twas delicacy, methinks, that moved them ere I waked— fall
many a deed smells sweet at night that stinks in the heat of the sun, What's
more, their reputations were secure, for at no time since we'd overhauled
their ship had they revealed their names, nor more of where they lived
save that 'twas on the Eastern Shore of Maryland,"

"And did you make your way thence to Jamestown?*

"Nay, to Anne Arundel County and Captain Hill I wanted sore to learn
whether Coode had harmed him, and too I had not a farthing about me
wherewith to eat Twas my design to work awhile for Hill and then pursue
my quest, for I will own I was not indifferent toward the politics of the
place, and would have welcomed another mission like the one I'd just
returned from."

'Thou'rt a glutton for adventure,0 Ebenezer said.

''Mayhap I am, or better, a glutton for the great world, of which I ne'er
can see and learn enough."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ l6l ]

Til warrant Captain Hill was pleased to, see you, and surprised!"
"He was in sooth, for he had heard naught of me since Leisler's re-
bellion in New York, and feared me dead. He said his positibn was most
perilous, inasmuch as Coode and his men were daily laying waste his
enemies' estates, and had spared his either through caprice or uncertainty
as to Hill's influence in England. Twas Coode's conceit to call himself
Masaniello, after the rebel of Naples; Colonel Henry Jowles of Calvert
County, his chief lieutenant, played Count Scamburgh; Colonel Ninian
Beale the Earl of Argyle; and Kenelm Cheseldyne, the speaker of the As-
sembly, was Speaker Williams. While they played at court in this manner,
and bragged and plundered down in St. Mary's, I spent the winter putting
Hill's estate in order. Whene'er 'twas useful I made excursions about the
province to the end of fomenting opposition in the several counties, and
in the spring, when he got wind oft, Coode resolved to do us in. He
trumped up a charge of treasonable speech and dispatched no fewer than
forty men to destroy us. They seized the ship Hope, which Captain Hill
had been at seven hundred pounds' expense to fit out for a voyage, and
rifled the estate, and 'twas only our good fortune in escaping to the woods
preserved our lives.

"I went at first to sundry other sea captains, friends of Hill's and enemies

of Colonel Coode "

"Colonel!" Ebenezer broke in. "Methought he was a priest!"
"The man is whate'er he chooses to call himself," Burlingame replied.
"He owns to no authority save himself, and is a rebel 'gainst man and
God alike. In any case, I learned from these men that Francis Nicholson,
deposed by Leisler as a Jacobite, was now lieutenant governor of Virginia
(which is to say the chief officer, since the governor lives in England )»
and this by order of King William himself! It seems the King little bothers
what a man is called by his enemies, so long as he doth his job well, and
in sooth Old Nick is the veiy devil of a governor for all his faults. These
tidings fell sweetly on my ear, inasmuch as Nicholson was the very man
who'd best protect us, and Jamestown the very place I wished to go. I had
Hill's friends write letters to Nicholson, describing Coode's barbarity and
asking asylum for the Captain and his house, and ere June was done we
were in Jamestown. 'Masaniello' and his crew begged and threatened
Nicholson by turns to get their hands on us, but de'il the good it did him.
'Tis both a fault and a virtue in Virginia, that fugitives from Maryland
e'er find haven there."

[ 162 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"But did you find the precious journal-book you sought?" asked Eben-
ezer. "Or was't but a tale of a cock and a bull the lass on the strand had
spun thee? Prithee put me off no farther on the matter; I must know whether
such an odyssey bore fruit!"

Burlingame laughed. "Make not such haste to reach the end, Eben; it
spoils the pace and mixes the figures. Whoever saw an odyssey bear fruit?*'

"Tease no more!" Ebenezer cried.

"Very well, Master Laureate: I did indeed lay hands upon the journal,
what oft there was; what's more, I made a copy of it, faithful to the
letter save for one or two dull passages that I summarized. I have it here
in my coat, and in the morning you shall read it. Suffice it now to say,
I am persuaded 'tis a bona fide journal of Sir Henry Burlingame^ but
whether or no the fellow is my ancestor I've still no proof/'

"Ffaith, I'm glad you found it, and scarce can wait till dawn! Tis good
thy tale is not yet done, else 'twere a hard matter to feet away the hours.
What wondrous thing befell you next?"

"No more tonight/' Burlingame declared. 'The road is smoother here,
and the night's nigh done. The balance of the tale can wait till Plymouth/'
So saying, he would hear no protest from Ebenezer, but stretching out his
legs as best he could, went to sleep at once. The poet, however, was less
fortunate: try as he might, he could not manage even to keep his eyes
closed, much less resign himself to sleep, though his head throbbed from
weariness. Again his mind was filled with names, the names first heard from
Baltimore and now fleshed out by Burlingame's narration, and figures awful
in their energy and purpose prowled his fancy— his friend and tutor first
among them.

6: BURLINGAME'S TALE CARRIED YET FARTHER; THE
LAUREATE READS FROM THE PR1V1E /QURNALL OF SIR
HENRY BURLINGAME AND DISCOURSES ON THE
NATURE OF INNOCENCE

WHEN AFTER DAWN THE TRAVELERS STOPPED FOR THEIR MORNING MEAt

at Yeovil, Ebenezer demanded at once to see the document Burlingame
had spoken of, but his tutor lefused to hear of it until they'd eaten- Then,
the sun having come out warm and bright, they retired outside to smoke

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 163 ]

and stretch their legs, and Burlingame fetched several folded sheets from
the pocket of his coat. Atop the first the poet read The Privie Jourhdl of
Sir Henry Burlingame.

"I should explain the title's mine/' said Burlingame. "As you can see,
the journal is a fragment, but the journey it describes is writ in John Smith's
Generdl Historie. Twas in January of 1607, the first winter of the colony,
and they traveled up the Chickahominy River to find the town of Powhatan,
Emperor of the Indians. There was much ill feeling against Captain Smith
in Jamestown at the time: some were alarmed at his machinations to un-
seat President Wingfield and President Ratcliffe; others charged him with
flaunting the instructions of the London Company,, in that he wasted little
time searching for gold or for a water passage to the East; others yet were
merely hungry, and thought he should arrange for trade with Powhatan.
Tis plain the voyage up the Chickahominy was a happy expedient, for't
promised solution to all these grievances! the Captain would be out of
politics for a while, for one thing, and some declared the Chickahominy
ran west to the Orient; in any case, 'twas almost certain the Emperor's
town lay not many miles upriver. Smith tells in his Historie how he was
made captive by one of Powhatan's lieutenants, called Opecancanough,
and escaped death by means of magical tricks with his compass. He swears
next he was carried alone to Powhatan, condemned to death, and saved
by intercession of the Emperor's daughter. His version oft I have writ there
under the title."

Ebenezer read the brief superscription:

Being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas, the
Kings dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevaile, got his head in
her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death; whereat
the Emperour was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and
her bells, beads, and copper; for they thought him as well of dH occupa-
tions as themselves.

"Ffaith," he said, " 'tis a marvelous rescue!"

" Tis a marvelous romance," Burlingame corrected, "for the substance
of the Journall is, that this Burlingame witnessed the whole proceeding,
which was not so wondrous heroic after all. I'll say no more, but leave
you to read the piece without delay."

So saying, Burlingame went inside the inn, and Ebenezer, finding a
bench in the sun, made himself comfortable and read in the Journall as
follows:

[ 164 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

The Privie Journdl of Sir Henry Burlingame

I ... had divers times caution* d [Smith], that our guide, a rascaHie Salvage
that had liefer sted f purse than look at you, was nowise to be trusted, he being,
doubtless in the pay of the Em^ [Powhatan]. But he w* none of this, and
when, the River growing too shdlowe for our vessels, this same Salvage proposed
we walk overland to the E1*** towne, w*k he claimed wets hard bye, our Ca**
agreed at once, maugre the fact, w*h I poynted out to himf that the 'woods there
were thick as any jungle, and we w* be $ett upon with ease by hostile Salvages.
The Ca** made the usuall rejoynders, that he ever rnaketh on being shown his
ignorance and follie, to witt: that I was a coward* a parasite, a lillie-liver'd infant,
and belike an Eunuch into the bargain. This lost, he regordeth as the suprem-
est insult he can hurl, for that he him selfe taketh inordinate pride in his virHitie,
In sooth, such a devotee of Venus is oar O*, that rare are th* times when
he doth not boast openlie, and in the lewdest terms, of his conquests and feats
of love dl over the Continent and among the Moors, Turks, and Africkans.
He fancieth him self a Master of Vonwedl Arts, md boa&eth to have known
carruxUie every kind of Woman on Earth, in all of Arttines positions. In addition
to w°*, he owneth an infamous lott of croticka collected in his tr&vtis, items
from w°* he oft dtepkyeth to certain of us privSi*, with dl the mwggnim of <*
Connoisseur. More of this anon, but I may not* here, that fudging from our
O'« preoccupation with these thingp, w**ofta$not represent unnatwatt as mU
as naturdt vices, I w* be no whit surprised to learn, that h& taste comprehend
more than those of t he common libertine . * * *

[The Author here describes, how the party goetfa ashote, and is fed by their
treacherous guide into the hands of the Indians.]

The Salvages then setting upon w, as had him prt dkrfrdf by mm uriatr thm
our O*, we fought them off <ts fast w* c*9 with muM wxxs*, for th* qu&tm
were close and our attaekm virtual!** atop iw. Our Jwder, /or his part, shrtwdli*
puWd that Ganelon our Guide before him for a shield, and retreated in afl haste,
exhorting us the while to fight like men, HappUi*, he caught his foot upon a
root of cyprm, and flew backward off th* b&& into th* mud md >ct. Th*
Sdva%e$ having by tfcfe time captur*d us, leapt upon him, md held him fast on
his back, and on our informing them, in r*spons* to th*r* gum*, Who iw our
leader? that it was he, there Chief, Opecm&mougfi, md his stmeil Ueutmemte,
pleas' d them selves openlie, md us private, by thereupon mofemg water upon ftitn,
each in his turn according to rank.

[The prisoners, of w<* there are five, are cany'd to a clearing, where they
are tied one at a time to a sweetgum tree and shot with arrows, till none but
Smith and Burlingame remain,]

^,m,
to the same fate suffer'd by the others. A gentleman to the md [Smith] . . .
modestlie suggested, that I precede him. Be't said, that in matter* of thi* sort
my owne generositie i$ peer to any mans, and hod it protfd r*ce$s<me, I ***

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 165 ]

stoutlie have declined my C°P*« gesture. Howbeit, Opecancanough pay*d no heed,
but him selfe taking the C^ by the arme, pull'd him toward the bloodie tree.
At this juncture, the C0** (who afterwards confided to me, he was searching for
his Africkan good-luck peece) withdrew from his coat a packet of little colour7 d
cards, the w°\ with seeming innocence, he let fall to the grvwnd. The Salvages
at once became arows'd, and scrabl'd one atop the other, to see who SM retrieve
the most. Upon examining them, they, found the cards to portray, in vivid colours,
Ladies and Gentlemen mother-naked, partaking of sundrie amorosities one with
another: in parties of two, three, four, and even five, these persons were shown
performing licentious feats, the w°h to be performed in actuall life wd want, in
addition to uncommon lubricitie, considerable imagination and no small tallent
for gymnastick.

One can fancie with what whoops and howls of glee the Salvages received
these works of the pornographers art, for Salvages are a degenerate race, little
rais'd above the beastes they hunt, and as such share with white men of the same
stamp a love for all that is filthie and salacious. They at least had in their favour,
that they had never before seen a white woman cloth'd, much less uncloth'd,
and how much less indulging in such anticks as were now reveal9 d to them. They
laught and shouted, and snatch'd the cards from one another, to see them all.

[They] ask'd [Smith], Whether he had more [of the cards]? Whereat he took
the opportunitie to draw from his pocket a small compasse, the wonder of which
was (for I had seen it before, to my abashment), that not only did it shew the
poynts of the compasse, woh marvett alone wd methinks have suffic'd to awe the
Salvages ... it dso, by virtue of tinie paintings on small peeces of glass mounted
inside it, treated the deprav'd eye of him who lookt through little peepholes
in the sides, to scenes like those of the cards, but more real, /or that there dev-
ilish creator had a nice facilitie of giving to the scenes a sense of depth, so that
one had the feeling (pleasant to degenerates) of peering through a keyhole,
to witness gentlemen comporting themselves like stallions, and ladies like mares
inrutt, . .

Hawbeit, the damnable device must needs be held in a certain manner, so
that its lenses caught the sun at a proper angle. The Salvages, and Opecan*
canough in especially being quite unable to master this simple trick, it was
neces$arie they preserve the wretch my C°*t9 life, in order, presumablie, that he
migfit serve as operator of there MayfdT show for ever. So arows'd were they
over there treasures, that maugre what I took to be suggestions on my C**** part,
that only he was needed to perform the miracles of the compasse, the Salvages
took both of us along with them to Opecancanoughs town, w°h lay, we were
told, hard by that of the Emperour . . . entirelie forgetting, in there vicious
delight, to fill my stomacke with there arrowes . . .

[The twain are carried to the town of Opecancanough, and thence to
Powhatans town, and at length into the presence of the Emperour himself.]

[This prospect] appeafd to please my Cw* rrdghtilie, for he spoke of naught
besides, when indeed he deign'd converse tyith me at all, but how he had
schemd the most efficacious manner of winning the Emperours favour, as

[ l66 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

soone as ever he SM be presented to that worthie. I ... warn'd him, more, I
confess, toward the saving of my owne skinne, w** I cafd not to loose, then
the saving of his, that we were, for aught 1 cd see, still mere prisoners, and not
emissaries of the King, and that as such, I, for one, s*tf be content were I to leave
the forthcoming interview with my head yet affix'd to my shoulders, and my,
bellie free of arrowes, without troubling farther about Emperial favours or barter-
ing agreements. My C°P* made me his usual! witless insults for replie. . . .

On being led into the house of this Pawhatan, my feares multiply*d, for I
sweare he -was the evilkst-appearing wight I hope to incounter. He seem'd neare
sixtie; the browne fleshe of him was drfd and bewinkTd as is the skinne of an
apple left overlong in the sunne, and the loohe upon his face as sower, as w* be
such an apple to the tongue. 1 sawe in that face no favour , . . Hfe eyes, more
then any thing, held me, for despite a certaine hardnesse in them, like old flint,
what mark'd them most, so it seem'd to mer was an antick lecherie, such as one
remarketh in the eyes of profligates and other dissolute old persons. My O*, I
might $ay, hath the beginning of such eyes, and at sixtie, it pleaseth me to think,
will quite resemble this Powhatan.

The Emperours surroundings, moreover, did beare out my judgemmt; in addi-
tion to his bodie-guard, a goodlie number of Salvage wenches pottefd
about the roome, drest like Ladle Eve, only flaunting a bitt of animal-skinne aver
that part, w°h the Mother ofusatt was wont to disguise with a peece of foliage.
This one fetch'd her Lord a portion of tobacco; that one lem'd over him to light
his pipe with a brand; this one rubb'd his backe with the grease of bear*, or some
such mdodouTous decoction . . . and one & all he rewarded with a smart
tweake, or like pleasantrie, the w**, at hi* advanced age, *** righttie have been to
him no more than a fond memon'e. These the wenches forebore without
compleynt , . . m sooth they seemd to vye for the ancient satyrs attentions,
and performed there simple duties with aU po&ible voluptuoumesse, as if
therebye to rowse there King to acts more fitting a mm my age, then a dotard
his ... My C<** observed these maids with wondrous interest, md I sawe
in his eye more attention* then v* fay* been requir'd stmplie to transfer the
scene to hi$ trumpeting Historic. For my selfe, I was too occupy' d with the mere
holding of my 'water, w°* h&inm is chore enougjh in such a fearsome pass, to ewe
ivfort chanrw the heathenish slutt* offered there Emperotav or with what tewd
behaviour he replfd. , . .

... I must mention here, that Pcwhaten was mt*d on a sort of rw*d bed-
stead, and on the floor before him sat a retHi* striking Salvag* maid, of perhaps
sixteen yeare$, who from the richw&e of her costume and the deference pay'd
her by the other Salvages, I took to be the Queen*. Throughout the banquet
that fottcw'd our entrie into the house, this young ladie scarce took her eyed
from us, and though unlike my O*, J am a man not given to fading him selfe
a$ regard* Afe come/mm to the faire sex, I can only say, in woih, that what was
in her eye* exceeded that natural! curiositie, w°* one might «ftow on #nrt behd&
ing fair-$kinn*d men. Powhatan, I thinke, obwrfd this, far his fa* gm> ever
more sower as t fte mede progress* d> For this reason, I avoided the Queenes &&*

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 167]

assiduouslie, so as not farther to prejudice our state. My. C^, for his part . . .
return9 d her amourous glances with glances of his owne, of such unmistakeable
import, that had I been the Emperour I had struck him dead forthwith. My poore
heart tremblfd for the safetie of my head . . .

[A description followeth of the feast serv'd the two prisoners. It is a
Gargantuan affair, but the Author is unable to keep a morsel on his stomach.
Smith, on the contrary, gorgeth himself very like a swine in the slaughterhouse.]

My Cw* . . . took it on him selfe then to make a small speech, the gist of wch
(for I, too, comprehended somewhat of the heathen gibberish) was, that he had
brought with him a singular gifte for the Emperour, but that, unluckilie, it had
been removed from his person by the Emperours lieutenant (that same infamous
Opecancanough, who was the death of our companions earlier) . Powhatan forth-
with commanded Opecancanough thither, and bade him produce the gifte, if
he had it. Albeit he was loath to part with it, Opecancanough fish'd out the
wicked compass before describ'd, and gave it to his Chief, who thereupon caus'd
his lieutenant to be birch' d, for that he had intercepted it. This was, certain, a
grosse injustice, inasmuch as Opecancanough had had no knowledge that the
compasse was meant for Powhatan, as neither had my Cw*, what time to save
his skinne he had given the vile machine to Opecancanough. Notwithstanding
w°h, the Salvage was deliver1 d out the room, for birching, and I sawe no future
good therein for us. . . .

Next my Cw*, to my great astonishment, commenced to shew to Powhatan
the secrets of the compasse, directing its little lenses at the fyre to light the
shamefull scenes within. I was certdne our end was at hand, and ready' d my
selfe to dye as befitteth a Gentleman, for surelie no man, not even a Salvage,
who hath the qualities to raise him selfe to the post of Prince, even over a nation
of benighted heathen, cd but be disgusted by such spectacles, as now lay illu-
min'd to the Emperours eyes. For the thousandth time, I curs' d my C"** for a
black & arrant fooL

Yet here I reckoned without the degeneracie of the Salvage, whose bestiall
fancie ever delighteth in vilest things. So far from taking umbrage, Powhatan
had like to split his lecherous sides on beholding the little painting; he slapt his
knees, and slaver' d copiouslie over his wrinkfd lipps. A long time pass'd ere he
c* remove his eye from the foul peep-hole, and then only to peer therein againe,
and againe, each time hollowing with glee.

At length my O* made it knowne, the Queene, as well, SM receive a gifte,
At this pronouncement, I clos'd my. eyes and made my peace with God, for
knowing sufficient by this time of the nature of my C™tB giftes, and sensing
farther the jealousie of the Emperour, I expected momentlie to feel the toma-
hawke at my neck. The Queene, however, seemed greatlie pleas'd at the pros-
pect As I might have guess' d, my O>* had reserved for her the most impressive
gifte of die. He drew from his inexhaustible pocket a smalle booke of sorts, con-
structed of a number of little pages bound fast at there tops (this miracle too I
had seene at Jamestowne). On everie page a drawing 'was, of the sort one
w* be loath to shew ones wife, each drawing alter'd only by a little from his

[ l68 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

neighbour, and the -whole in a kind of sequence, so thai , $** one grasp the lewd
booke by the top, and bending it slightlie, attorn the pages to spring rapidlie
each after each before the eye, the result was, that the figures thereon assumed
the semblance of life, in that they mov'd to & fro about there sinfull business.
Alas! The Queene, it grew cleare, was depr&fd as was her consort. Over &
over againe, once having learnt the virtue of the small booke, she set the actors
therein to moving, each time laughing dlovtd at what she sawe . . .

[More food is serv'd, and a sort of Indian liquor, both of w*1* Smith takes
unto himself in quantity. The Author declines, for the same reasons as be-
fore. The Queene appoints herself to wait on Smith personally, laving his hands
and fetching bunches of wild-turkey feathers wherewith to dry them.]

The while this second feasting was in progrem, I confriVd to tcrewe up sufficient
courage to observe Powhatan, hoping to reade in his face prognostication of
what was to followe. What I sawe did not refresh my spirits . . . The Emperour
never tooke his gaze from the Quern*, who in turn, never remold here from my
C**\ with everie indecent promise in her eyes. She was on everie side of him at
once, fetching this & carrying that, all her movements exaggerated, and none
befitting any save a Drury Lane vesioH. My O*> whether through his charao
terist ick ignorance, or, what is more tikeUe, in pursuit of wme twisted design*
of his owne, reply* d to her coquetries in kind. None of this ttcap'd the Emp*r~
our, 'who, it seem'd to m«, iwis scare* abb to put away few gluttonous repast, jot
watching them. When then thi$ Powhatan wmmon'd to his couch three of hi*
evillest-appearing lieutenants, all coafd & oyFd & bedaub'd & brtasseTd
& bedizen*d> and commenced with them a long colloquy of heathen grunts &
whisperings, the purport whereof was tmtguivocijB, t once a&rin* commended
my soule to Cods mercie, for I looKd to m#*t him sftortiii fax to face. My O*
pay'd no heede, but wnt on blindli* with hi* tport.

My ... feares, it was Boon pmfd, were }u$tify*d< Th* Emptrour made a
signall, and the three great Sdvag** lay'd hold of my O', Despite his protest*
tiow, the w** were lowd enow, he was cany*d up to Powfortoi* couch, and there
forced to hi$ knees. The Salvages lay*d his hu*d upon a poire of gnat* afcm«*> put
there for the purpose, and catching up time ugli* ww^faifefej, had b*at* out what
mdte brdrm my C<#* migfit make claim to, were it not that at thi$ juncture, the
Qu&ew her setfe> to my astonishment, interceded. Running to the dtar, the
flung her wife bodUie upon my C***f and decbtfd to Powhatan, that rethxr W* she
loose her owne head, then that they $** dash in fe& Were I theEmperovrJowne
I $M have done the twain to d&zth, for that so cfaxre an alliance c* lead but to
adultme ere long. But Powhatan stey'd his fcuflw; the anemblie was dimist*
saving only the Emperour, his Queene, my O*, & my self* ( who aU 9eem*d to
have forgot, thank God) , and for the nonce, it ettx&^myhtartw* go on bett-
ing in my breast. , , .

[Th*re folhw'q a speech by the Empewur, w**, a best I grtap'd it, m* w*>
ww& as it vm improper. Some I grant ew&d me, for that Powhxtm spake
wth great rapiditi* and chetfd Ms word«$ witfcdL Bui the minim of wlwrf I

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 169 ]

gather'd -was, that the Queene was not his Queene at all, neither one amongst
his concubines (whereof he kept a goodlie number), but his daughter, her name
being Pocahontas. By this name is signify'd, in there tongue, the smalle one, or
she of the smallnesse and impenetrabilitie, and this, it seem'd, referr'd not to
the maidens stature, wch was in sooth but slight, nor to her mind, wch one c*
penetrate with passing ease. Rather it reflected, albeit grosslie, a singular physi-
cked short-coming in the childe9 to witt: her prMtie was that nice, and the
tympanum therein so surpassing stout, as to render it infrangible. This fact
greatlie disturb' d the Emperour, for that in his nation the barbarous custom was
practiced, that whensoever a maid be affianc'd, the Salvage, who wisheth to wed
her, must needs first fracture that same membrane, whereupon the suitor is
adjudg'd a man worthie of his betrothed, and the nuptialls followe. Now Powha-
tan, we were told, had on sundrie occasions chosen warriors of his people to wedd
this Pocahontas, but in everie instance the ceremonie had to be foregone, seeing
that labour as they might, none had been able to deflowr her, and in sooth the
most had done them selves hurt withal, in there efforts; whereas, the proper thing
was, to injure the young lasse, and that as grievouslie as possible, the degree of
injurie being reck'd a measure of the mans virilitie. Inasmuch as the Salvages are
wont to marrie off there daughters neare twelve yeares of age, it was deem'd a
disgraceful! thing, the Emperour shd have a daughter sbcteene, who was yet a
maide.

Continuing this discourse, [Powhatan] said, that whereas his daughter had
seen fitt, to save my Cwt8 life, what time it had been the Emperours pleasure to
dashe out his braines, then my. C0** must needs regard him selfe affianc'd to her,
and submit him selfe to that same labour (to witt, essaying the gate to Venus
grottoe) as her former suitors. But . . . with this difference, that where, having
faiVd, her Salvage beaux had merelie been disgrac'd, and taunted as olde women,
my C***, shd he prove no better, his head w* be lay'd againe upon the stones,
and the clubbing of his braines proceed without quarter or respite.

Att this Pocahontas heard with greate joye, maugre its nature, w071 wd have
mortify' d an English ladie; and my OP*, too, accepted readilie (in sooth he had
no option in the matter) . For my part, I was pleas' d to gaine reprieve once more
from the butchers block, albeit a briefe one, for I could not see, since that the
Salvages were of large stature, and my Ca** so slight of build, how that he s*4
triumph where they had fail'd, unlesse there were some wondrous disproportion,
in both cases, betwixt the size of what in each was visible, and what conceal' d,
to the casuall eye. My fate, it seem'd, hung on my C°**% and for that I bade
him Godspeed, preferring to heare for ever his endlesse boasting (w°n wd surelie
followe his successe), then to wettwith my braines the Salvage clubbs, woh fate
awaited me upon his failure. The carnall joust was set for sunup, in the publick
yard of sorts, that fronted the Emperours house, and the entire towne was
order' d to be present. This alone, I wot, w* have sufjjic'd to unstarch an ordinarie
man, my selfe included, who am wont to worshipp Venus (after my fashion)
in the privacie of darken9 d couches; but my C0** appeared not a whitt ruffl'd, and
in sooth seem'd eager to make his essaye publicklie. This, I take it, is apt meas-
ure of his swinishnesse, for that whenas a gentleman is forc'd, against his witt,

[ 170 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

to some abominable worke, he wiU dispatch it with as much expedition, and as
little noticer as he can, -whereas the rake & foole will noise the matter about,
drawing the eyes of the world to his follie & license, and is never more content,
then when he hath an audience to his mischief. . . .

[Here endeth the existing portion of the journal]

" 'Dslife, what a place to end itf " Ebenezer cried when he had finished
the manuscript, and hurried to find Burlingame. "Was there no more,
Henry?"

"Not another word, I swear't, for 1 combed the town to find the rest."

"But marry, one must know how matters went— whether this hateful
Smith made good his boasts, or thy poor ancestor lost his life."

"Ah well/1 Burlingame replied, "this modi we know, that both escaped,
for Smith went on that same year to explore the Chesapeake, and Burling-
game at least set down this narrative. What's more, if I be not a bastard
he must needs have got himself a wife in later years, for none is mentioned
here. I'God, Eben, I cannot tell you how I yearn to know the rest!"

"And I," laughed Ebenezer, "for though belike she was no poet, this
Pocahontas was twice the virgin I am!"

To Ebenezefs surprise, Buriingame blushed deeply, That is not what
I meant"

"I know full well you didn't; 'tis your ancestry concerns you, Yet 'tis
no vulgar curiosity, this other: the fall of viigins always is instructive, nor
doth the world e'er weary of the tale. And the harder the fell, the better."

"Indeed?'' Burlingame smiled, regaining his composure. **A»d prithee
tell me, What lesson doth it teach?"

"'Tis odd that I should be the teacher and you the pupil," Ebenezer
said, "yet I will own 'tis a subject dose to my heart, and one to which
I've given no small attention. My conclusion is, that mankind sees two
morals in such tales: the fall of innocence, or the fall of pride. The first
sort hath its archetype in Adam; the second in Satan. The first alone hath
not the sting of tragedy, as hath the second: the virgin pure and simple,
like Pocahontas, is neither good nor vicious for her hymen; she is only
envied, as is Adam, by the fallen. They secretly rejoice to sec her ravaged,
as poor men smile to see a rich man robbed-e'en the virtuous fallen can
feel for her no more than abstract pity. The second is the very stuff of
drama, for the proud man oft excites our admiration; we live, as*t were,
by proxy in his triumphs, and are cleansed and taught by pnwy in his fall.
When we heap obloquy on Satan, is't not ouiadves we scold, for that we
secretly admire his Heavenly insurrection?**

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ lyi ]

"That all seems sound," said Burlingame. "It follows, doth it not, that
when you profess abhorrence for the Captain, thou'rt but chastising your-
self in like manner, or that part of you that wisheth him success?"

" Tis unequivocally the case," Ebenezer agreed, "whene'er the critic's
of the number of the fallen. For myself, 'twere as if a maid should cheer
her ravisher, or my Lord Baltimore support John Coode."

"I think that neither is impossible, but let it go. I will say now, friend
Poet, thine own fall, when it comes, must needs be glorious, inasmuch as
thou'rt both innocent and proud."

"Wherein lies my pride?" asked Ebenezer,, clearly disconcerted by his
friend's observation.

"In thy very innocence, which you raise above mere circumstance and
make a special virtue. Tis a Christian reverence you bear it, I swear!"

"Christian in a sense/' Ebenezer replied, "albeit your Christians— St.
Paul excepted— pay scant reverence to chastity in men. Tis valued as a
sign— nay, a double sign, for't harketh back alike to Eve and Mary. Therein
lies its difference from the cardinal virtues, which refer to naught beyond
themselves: adultery's a mortal sin, proscribed by God's commandment
—not so fornication, I believe."

"Then virginity's a secondary virtue, is't not, and less to be admired than
faithfulness? I think not even More would gainsay that."

"But recall," Ebenezer insisted, "I said 'twas only in a sense I share the
Christians' feeling. Methinks that mankind's virtues are of two main
sorts "

"Aye, that we learn in school," said Burlingame, who seemed prepared
to end the colloquy. "Instrumental if they lead us to some end, and
terminal if we love them in themselves. Tis schoolmen's cant"

"Nay," said Ebenezer, "that is not what I meant; those terms bear little
meaning to the Christian, I believe, who on the one hand hopes by all
his virtues to reach Heaven, and yet will swear that virtue is its own reward.
What I meant was, that sundry virtues are— I might say plain, for want
of proper language,, and some significant. Among the first are honesty in
speech and deed, fidelity, respect for mother and father, charity, and the
like; the second head's comprised of things like eating fish on Friday, resting
on the Sabbath, and coming virgin to the grave or marriage bed, whiche'er
the case may be; they all mean naught when taken by themselves, like the
strokes and scribbles we call writing— their virtue lies in what they stand
for. Now the first, whether so designed or not, are matters of public policy,
and thus apply to prudent men, be they heathens or believers. The second

[ 1J2 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

have small relevance to prudence, being but signs, and differ from faith to
faith. The first are social, the second religious; the first are guides for life,
the second forms of ceremony; the first practical, the second mysterious
or poetic "

"I grasp the principle," Burlingame said.

"Well then/' Ebenezer declared, "it follows that this second sort are
purer, after a fashion, and in this way not inferior at all, but the reverse."

"La, you have the heart of a Scholastic," Burlingame said disgustedly.
"I see no purity in 'em, save that all the sense is filtered out— the residue
is nonsense/'

"As you wish, Henry— I do not mean to argue Christianity but only my
virginity, which if senseless is to me not therefore nonsense, but essence.
Tis but a sign as with the Christians, that I grant, yet it pointeth not to
Eden or to Bethlehem, but to my soul ! prize it not as a virtue, but as
the very emblem of my self, and when I call me virgin and poet 'tis not
more boast than who should say I'm male and English. Prithee chide me
no more on't, and let us end this discourse that pleaseth you so little/*

"Nonetheless/' Burlingame declared, " 'twill be a fall worth watching
when you stumble/'

"I do not mean to fall/'

Burlingame shrugged. "What climber doth? Tis but the more likely in
your case, for that you travel as't were asleep— thy friend McEvoy was no
dullard there, albeit a callous fellow. Yet haply the fell will open your eyes/'

"I would have thought thee more my friend, Henry, but on this head
thou'rt brusque as erst in London, when I went with Anna to St. Giles.
Have you forgot that day in Cambridge, the pass wherein you found me?
Or that malady whereof I spoke but yesterday, that 1 was wont to suffer
in the winehouse? Think you I'd not rejoice," he went on, growing more
aroused, "to be in sooth a climber, that stumbling would move men to
fear and pity? I do not dimb, but merely walk a road, and stumbling
ne'er shall fall a mighty fall, but only cease to walk, or drift a wayless ship
on every current, or haply just moss over like a stone. I see nor spectacle
new instruction in such a fall"

Buriingame made no more of the matter and apologized to Ebenezer
for bis curtness. Nonetheless he remained out of sorts, as did the poet,
for some hours afterwards, and in fact it was not until a short time before
they arrived in Plymouth that they entirely regained their spirits, and
Burlingame, at Ebenezer's request, took up again the tale of his adventures,
wBch he'd left at his discovery of the fragmentary joqmal*

7: BURLINGAME'S TALE CONCLUDED, AND THE
TRAVELERS ARRIVE AT PLYMOUTH

"THAT PORTION OF THE PRIVIE JOURNALL THAT YOU READ/' SAID
Burlingame, "so far from cooling the ardor of my quest, did but enflame it
the more, as you might imagine, inasmuch as it said There was a Henry
Burlingame, yet told me neither that he e'er had progeny, nor that among
his children was my father. There was one ground for hope and speculation:
namely, that Captain John Smith set out that very summer to explore the
Chesapeake, wherein near half a century later I was found floating. Yet no-
where in his Historie doth he mention Burlingame, nor is that poor wight
listed with the party. I searched the ancient papers of the colony arid
asked the length and breadth of Jamestown, but no word more could I
find on the matter. I made bold to enquire of Nicholson himself whether
he knew aught of other records in the Dominion. And he replied he had
been there so short time he scarce knew where the privy was, but added,
there was a grievous dearth of paper in the provinces, and 'twas no uncom-
mon thing for officers of the government to ransack older record? for paper
writ on but the recto, to the end they might employ the verso for themselves.
He himself deplored this practice, for he is a man devoted to the cause of
learning, but he said there was no cure for't till the provinces erected their
own paper mills.

"It seemed to me quite likely my Journatt had suffered this fate, inasmuch
as 'twas writ on a good grade of English paper, and the author had employed
the recto only, I despaired of e'er discovering the rest, and in the fall of 1690
went with Captain Hill to London. Our intention was to litigate to clear
the charges of seditious speech against him, and if possible to undo Colonel
Coode and his companions. The moment was propitious, for Coode
himself and Kenelm Cheseldyne, his speaker, had also sailed for London
and would not have their bullies to defend 'em. I so arranged matters that
a number of his enemies appeared in England that same season, and I
thought that if we filed a host of depositions against him, we could thereby
either work his ruin or at least detain him whilst we plotted farther. To
this end I made a secret trip to Maryland ere we sailed, with the design of
slipping privily into St. Mary's City and stealing the criminal records of

[ 174 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Coode's courts, or bribing them stolen, for no clearer proof could be of his
corruption. Howbeit, the man anticipated my plan, as oft he doth: I
learned that he and Cheseldyne had carried off the records with fem.

"In any case we set our plot in motion. No sooner did we dock at London
in November than the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations sub-
poenaed Coode to confront Lord Baltimore before them, to answer that
worthy's charges against him. At the same time Colonel Henry Coursey, of
Kent County, petitioned against Coode and Cheseldyne, as did John
Lillingstone, the rector of St Paul's Parish in Talbot County, and ten
other souls, all known Protestants— for 'twas Coode's chief defense for his
rebellion that he was putting down the barbarous Papists, as he sworn him-
self in writing at the time. Finally Hill made his own petition, and even our
friend Captain Burford of the Abraham & Fnmeig, who had helped us flee
to Nicholson and whose ship the rogues had lately crossed on, deposed in
Plymouth that Coode had in his presence damned Lord Baltimore and
vowed to spend the revenues embezzled from the Piovince,

"For a time it seemed we had him dead to rights, but he is a damned
resourceful devil and had a perfect shield for our assaults. The year before,
just prior to the rebellion, a wight named John Payne, who collected His
Majesty's customs on the Patuxent River, had been shot to death either
aboard or near a pleasure-sloop belonging to Major Nicholas Sewall, and
Coode had rigged a charge of willful murther against Sewall and four ethos
on the sloop. Nick Sewall was Deputy Governor of Maryland before the
rebellion, but more than that he is Charles Calverf s nephew, the son of
Lady Baltimore herself. The rebels had him hostage in St, Maiy's, and at
any time could turn him over to the court of Neamiah Blackistone, Coodc's
crony, who would hang him certain. Thus our hands woe tied and our
plot squelched, the more for that we had not the criminal recoitls for evi-
dence. The Lords Commissioners cleared Captain Hill in December, and
Colonel Heniy Damall too, Lord Baltimore's agent, who'd been charged
with treasonable speech and inciting the Choptico Indians to slaughter
Protestants on the Eastern Shore; but Coode they could not touch, or haply
would not, at Lord Baltimore's behest, The confrontation came to naught,
and Coode made meny with the whores of London, on money swindled
from the King himself*

"I saw no farther usefulness for myself with Captain Hfll; he was free to
go back to the Severn, and had no moie taste for politics. But my inteiest in
John Coode had near replaced my forme* quest, which seemed a cuWwac;
the man intrigued me with his cunning and his boldness, his shifting roles

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 175 \]

as minister and priest, and most of all his motives: he seemed to have no
wish for office, and held no post save in the St. Mary's County militia; he
plundered more for sport than avarice, and would risk all to make a clever
move. The fellow loved intrigue itself, I swear, and would unseat a governor
for amusement! At length I vowed to match my wits with his, and to that
end offered my services to Lord Baltimore as a sort of agent-at-large in the
Maryland business. The Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations
were kindly disposed towards Baltimore at this time, for they knew full well
John Coode was a rascal and King William had no more right than you or I
to seize the Province; yet they could do naught to stop 'em. Therefore
when time had come to name a royal governor, they gave milord some say
in his selection, and he picked the great dunderhead Sir Lionel Copley,
who could not tell a knave from a saint. Now I had caught a rumor that
Coode was privy to the Governor's ear, and for simple spite had told him
that Francis Nicholson of Virginia was being groomed to take his place,
ere Copley had e'en left London. He said this, I was certain, merely to cause
friction 'twixt the governors, for he had no love for Nicholson and wanted
a weak executive in Maryland who would leave his own hands free. This
strategy of his gave me my own, which was to suggest to Baltimore that he
should in fact have Nicholson commissioned lieutenant governor of
Maryland, since word had it he was to be replaced in Jamestown by none
other than Sir Edmund Andros himself; and farther, that he should then
name Andros commander-in-chief of the Province, with power to take com-
mand in the event of Nicholson's death and Copley's absence. Twas a
fantastical arrangement, inasmuch as Copley mistrusted Nicholson, Nich-
olson disliked Andros (who had erst been his superior in New England),
and Coode loathed 'em all! My object was, to so mismatch them that their
rule would be a farce, to the end that haply someday William might return
the reins of government to Baltimore.

"Milord approved the plan, once I had explained it, and, seeing farther I
had the confidence both of Andros and of Nicholson, he gave me the post
I wished, with one stipulation only, that it be confidential. Nicholson and
Andros were commissioned by March of 1692, and the instant Coode heard
it he took fright: he well knew Copley was too thick to see the evidence of
his mischief and too weak to harm him if he saw't, and Andros would have
work enough in Virginia to absorb him; but Nicholson's neither dull nor
weak and knew Coode already for a rascal. Posthaste he wrote instructions
to an agent in St. Mary's, to steal the Journal of the 1691 Assembly and
destroy it, for there was writ the full tale of his government for all to see. I

[ Ij6 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

heard from friends one Benjamin Ricaud had joined the fleet, and knowing
him as Coode's messenger, straightway set out after. Twas my good luck he
boarded the ship Bailey> for her master, Peregrine Browne of Cecil County,
was a friend of Hill's and Baltimore's, and I knew him well. Moreover, a
number of our men were there as well; Colonel Coursey, John Lillingstone
the minister, and others. Between us we contrived to search Ricaud's effects
and intercept the letter, which I passed along to Baltimore.

"I resolved at once to sail for Maryland and prevailed on Baltimore to
let me go on the very ship with Copley. We had one powerful ally in the
government, Sir Thomas Lawrence, who as His Majesty's Secretary to the
Province had access to every stamp and paper. Twas my design to have
him steal the Assembly Journal ere it was destroyed and smuggle it to
Nicholson, who would in turn then fetch it here to London for our use. I
was the more eager to lay hands on*t, for that in that document my separate
goals seemed fused: the search for my father and the search for ways to put
down Coode were now the selfsame search!"

"How is that?" asked Ebenezer, who had heard the foregoing in wordless
amazement. "I do not grasp your meaning in the least/*

" Twas that note we intercepted," Burlingame replied. "We did not
know its import at first sight, for't said no mow than Afcington: Such smutt
as Cttpt John Smiths book were best fed to the fire. 'Abington* we knew
was Andrew Abington, a fellow in St. Mary's that Coodc had given the
post of Collector for the Patuxent after John Payne's murther; but we
could not comprehend the rest. At length I bribed Racaud outright, who
was a shifty fellow, and he told us 'John Smiths Book' signified the Journal
of the 1691 Assembly, for that 'twas writ on the back of an old manuscript
of some sort. For aught I knew it might be but a draft of the Hfetorif I'd
read in print, but nonetheless I could scarce contain my joy at hearing of it
and prayed it might make mention of my namesake. Nor was this the end
of my good fortune, for the note itself was writ on aged paper, not unlike
that of the Privie JourncOl in Jamestown, and I learned from Ricaud that
Coode had traveled often in Virginia and had kin that, and that after the
rebellion he'd given Cheseldyne and Blackistone a batch of old papeis
filched from Jamestown to use in the Assembly and the St Mary's court.
For aught I knew, the rest of the Prim Joumtll might be filed somewhere
in Maryland!

"As soon as I arrived in St. Mary's City I made myself known to Sir
Thomas Lawrence and laid open Lord Baltimore's strategy. He was to steal
the Assembly Journal and pass it on to Nicholson, who wodd find accuse

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 177 ]

at once to visit London. In addition I meant to discredit as many as possible
of Coode's associates, and to that end persuaded Lawrence to lure them
into corruption. Colonel Henry Jowles, for instance,, was a member of the
Governor's Council and a colonel of milita: we made it easy for him to
line his pockets with illegal fees as clerk of Calvert County. Baltimore's
friend Charles Carroll, a Papist lawyer in St. Mary's, did the same with
Neamiah Blackistone, Coode's own brother-in-law, that was president of
the Council and Copley's right-hand man. And the grandest gadfly of 'em
all was Edward Randolph, His Majesty's Royal Surveyor, who loved to bait
and slander popr old Copley, and spoke openly in favor of King James.
Finally we terrified the lot of 'em with stories that the French and the
Naked Indians of Canada were making ready for a general slaughter. In
June, not a month after we landed, Copley was already complaining of
Randolph to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations; in July
Lawrence filched the Journal, but Nicholson whisked it off to London ere
I could lay eyes upon it. In October we exposed Colonel Jowles, who was
turned out as colonel, councilman, and clerk. In December Copley again
complained of Randolph, and swore to the Lords Commissioners, along
with Blackistone, that Nicholson was on some sinister errand in London —
which letter greatly pleased us, for we meant to use it to advantage when
Nicholson himself was governor.

"Thus we harassed old Copley, who scarce knew what was happening
till the following February, when the Lords Commissioners charged
Blackistone with graft. Then, too late, he saw our plot, and in the spring
of last year arrested Carroll, Sir Thomas himself, Edward Randolph, and a
host of others, among whom was Peter Sayer of Talbot, the man I was
disguised as in Ben Bragg's bookshop. Sir Thomas was jailed, as was Carroll,
and impeached into the bargain; Randolph was arrested on the Eastern
Shore of Virginia by the Somerset County sheriff, but ere he could get him
out of Accomac I sent word oft to Edmund Andros in Williamsburg, who'd
been a drinking-friend of Randolph's since the old days in Boston, and
Andros fetched him home for safety."

"E'en so, thy cause was damaged, was it not?" asked Ebenezer.

"My cause?" Burlingame smiled. " 'Tis thine as well, is't not, since we
work for the same employer? Let us say instead our cause was discommoded
for a time; we knew well old Copley couldn't hold such men for long, but
we wanted them out of prison, not alone for their own comfort but for fear
John Coode might turn up in their absence and gain ground with Copley.
As't happened our fears were empty, for both the Governor and his wife

[ 178 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

died in September— methinks they ne'er acclimatized to Maryland, His

death suggested to me a wondrous mischief "

"Great heavens, Henry, thou'rt a plotting Coode thyself!"
"You recall I said Lord Baltimore had made Andros commander-in-chief
of the Province, merely to play on the jealousy 'twixt him and Nicholson,
and his commission gave him full authority in the event of Nicholson's
death and Copley's absence. It struck me now that albeit 'twas Copley
dead and Nicholson absent, I could work a grand confusion anyhow, and
so I went posthaste to Williamsburg to take the news to Andros and
persuade him his commission was in force. He was inclined to doubt it,
but he knew me for an agent of Lord Baltimore, and loved to exercise his
power besides. What's more, though he made no mention oft, he was not
averse to stealing Nicholson's thunder, as't were, by rescuing law and order
in Maryland, for he himself had felt the pricks of following Nicholson in
Virginia. To be brief, he marched into St. Mary's City, demanded the
government of Maryland, dissolved the Assembly, suspended Rlackistone,
turned Lawrence loose, and took him with his party back to Williamsburg,
leaving the Province in the charge of an amiable nobody named Green-
berry, Twas his design to return again this spring, when the business was
cooled, and make Lawrence president of the Council, but whether he hath
done it I've yet to learn,

"I could see no immediate employment for myself in Hie Province after
this, and so I crossed come January here to London, both to wait farther
orders from Lord Baltimore and to search out the Assembly Journal I ar-
rived not two weeks past, and learned to my dismay that neither Nicholson
nor Baltimore hath the Journal in his possession for fear of Coode's agents,
who would stop at naught to get it Instead, Lord Baltimore declares, he
hath broken it into three portions for safekeeping and deposited the several
portions privily in Maryland, whence I had just cornel I begged of him the
trustees' names, that I might pursue my innocent search, but he was loath
to discover them~not Nicholson himself, it seems, knew more than I on
the matter. But a few days past he said he had a mission for me of such
importance he could trust it to no other soul; and I replied, surely I was
not worthy of such trust, if he dared not name me the keepers of the
Journal Whereat he smiled and said I had him fair, inasmuch as the gravity
of my new errand outweighed his great reluctance. The pieces of the
Journal, he said, were in the hands of sundry loyal persons of the surname
Smith, for reasons I'd no need to ask, and he told me their names in
greatest confidence. I thanked him and declared I was ready for whatever

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ *79 1

work he gave me, and he said a young man had called on him that after-
noon that was a poet,, and he had charged him to write a work in praise of
Maryland and the proprietorship—the which, he believed, if nobly done,
might profit more than ten intrigues to win him back the Province."

"'Sheart, what a marvelous small world!" Ebenezer cried. "And how
pleased I am to find he sets such store by poetry! But prithee what work
was't in this connection, that warranted such concession on his part?"

"He enquired of me, whether I knew the poet Ebenezer Cooke? My
heart leaped, for Fd had no word of you or Anna these seven years, but I
answered merely I had heard mention of a poet by that name but knew
naught of the man or his work. More than this I thought it imprudent to
say, ere I'd heard the nature of my errand. Then he told me of your visit
and proposal, and his commission, and said I should accompany you to
Maryland— for that you'd ne'er before been out of England— and act both
as your guide and your protector. I leave it to you to imagine with what
readiness I took on the task, and straightway sought you out!"

Now the earlier portions of this long narrative had elicited from
Ebenezer such a number of ah's, marry? s, 'sheart's, and b'm'faith's that he
had come during this last to sit for the most part wordlessly, mouth agape
and brows a-pucker in a sort of permanent fGod! as one amazement
tripped on another's heels. At the end he was moved enough to embrace
Burlingame unashamedly— and had, he found, to add bad breath to the
host of alterations worked on his friend by this seven-year adventure: it was
no doubt a product of the teeth gone carious. The trifle brought tears to his
eyes— not its pungency, but its poignancy— signifying as it did their lengthy
separation.

"Ah God," he cried, when he found his voice, "if Anna but knew all
you've told me! Wherefore this role as Peter Sayer, Henry? Why did you
not at least reveal yourself in London ere we left, that she might share my
joy at finding you?"

Burlingame sighed, and after a moment replied, "I am wont to go by
names other than my own, either borrowed or invented, for sundry reasons
stemming from my work. 'Twould do no good for Coode to know my
name, nor e'en that I exist. What's more, I can confound him and his
agents: I posed as Sayer in Bragg' s, for instance, and forged his name, merely
because Coode thinks the man's in Plymouth with the fleet. In like manner
I've pretended to be both friends and enemies of Baltimore, to advance his
cause. Once, I shall confess, that time on Perry Browne's ship Bailey, I
posed as Coode himself to the poor dolt Ben Ricaud, to intercept those

[ l8o ] ' THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

letters; Ricaud was a London friend of Cheseldyne's and had ne'er seen
Coode before, for all he'd heard of him. The truth is, Eben, no man save
Richard Hill, Lord Baltimore,, and yourself hath known my name since
1687, when first I commenced to play the game of governments; and the
game itself hath made such changes in me, that none who knew me erst
would know me now, nor do I mean them to. Tis better they think me
lost."

"Yet surely Anna "

" 'Tis but thy first enquiry I've replied to/* Burlingame interrupted, rais-
ing his forefinger. "For the second, do not forget that many are bound
from London for the fleet— Coode's men as well as ours, and haply Coode
himself— whether to place themselves under Nicholson's protection or
work some mischief against him. Twould have been foolish, even perilous,
to shed my mask in that place. Moreover, there was no time: I scarce caught
up with you ere you left, and mark how long I've beea discovering myself
to you. The fleet had sailed without us/*

"Aye, that's true," Ebenezer admitted.

"What's more"— Burlingame laughed— 4Td not yet made my own mind
up, whether 'twere wise e'en you should know the truth.0

"What! Think you I'd e'er betray thy trust? And could you thus callously
deprive me of my only friend? You injure me!"

"As to the first, 'twas just to answer it I posed as Saycr and queried you—
the years change any man. Ben Bragg had said fchou'rt but an opportunist;
nor was your servant more persuaded of your motive, for all he admired
you. Again, how could I know your sentiments towards Burlingame? The
tale you told to Peter Sayer was your bond; when I had heard it, I revealed
myself at once, but had you sung a different tune, 'tis Peter Sayer had been
your guide, not Burlingame/'

"Enough. I am convinced and cannot tell my joy. Yet your relation
shames me for my tearfulness and sloth, as doth your wisdom my poor
talent. Thou'rt a Virgil worth a better Dante,"

"Oh la," Burlingame scoffed, "you've wit enough, and ear, Besides, the
Province is no Hell or Purgatorio, but just a piece o* the great world like
England— with the difference, haply, that the soil is vast and new where the
sot-weed hath not drained it and oft will sprout wild seeds of energy in men
that had lain fallow here. What's more, the reins and checks are few and
weak; good plants and weeds alike grow tall Do but recall, if the people
there seem strange and rough: a man content with Europe scarce would
cross the ocean. The plain fact is, the greatest part are castaways from

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ l8l ]

Europe, or the sons of castaways: rebels, failures, jailbirds and adventurers.
Cast such seed on such soil, and 'twere fond to seek a crop of dons and
courtiers!"

"Yet you speak as one who loves the place/' said Ebenezer, "and that
alone, for me, is warrant I shall too."

Burlingame shrugged— another habit apparently picked up in his travels.
"Haply so, haply no. There is a freedom there that's both a blessing and a
curse, for't means both liberty and lawlessness. Tis more than just political
and religious liberty— they come and go from one year to the next. Tis
philosophic liberty I speak of, that comes from want of history. It throws
one on his own resources, that freedom— makes every man an orphan like
myself and can as well demoralize as elevate. But no more: I see the masts
and spires of Plymouth yonder. You'll know the Province soon enough and
how it strikes you!"

Even as Burlingame spoke the smell of the sea blew into the carriage,
stirring Ebenezer to the depths of his being, and when a short while later
he saw it for the first time, spread out before him to the far horizon, he
shivered twice or thrice all over and came near to passing water in his
breeches.

8: THE LAUREATE INDITES A QUATRAIN AND FOULS
HIS BREECHES

"REMEMBER," BURLINGAME SAID AS THE CARRIAGE ROLLED INTO PLYM-
outh, "I am not Henry Burlingame, nor Peter Sayer either, for the real
Sayer's somewhere on the fleet. You'd best not give me any name at all, I
think, till I see how lays the land."

Accordingly, as soon as their chests and trunks were put down they
inquired after the Poseidon at the wharves and were told it had already
joined the fleet.

"What!" cried Ebenezer. "Then we have missed it after alll"

"Nay," Burlingame smiled, " 'tis not unusual. The fleet assembles yonder
in the Downs off The Lizard; you can see't from here on a clear day."

Inquiring further he found a shallop doing ferry-service between the
Downs and the harbor, and arranged for passage aboard it in the afternoon.

"We'd as well take one last meal ashore," he explained to Ebenezer.

[ 182 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Moreover I must change clothing, for I've resolved to pose as your servant
What was his name?'7

"Bertrand," Ebenezer murmured. "But must you be a servant?"

"Aye, or else invent an entire gentleman as your companion* As Bertrand
I can pass unnoticed in your company and hear more news as well of your
fellow travelers."

So saying he led the way across the street from the wharves to a tavern
advertising itself by two capital letter Cs> face to face and interlocking, the
figure surmounted by a three-lobed crown*

"Here's the King o' the Seas/' said Burlingame "Tis a jolly place, by
Heav'n. I know it of old/' They stepped inside the door and surveyed the
room. Burlingame sighed. " 'Twas here I got my first wee clap, while still a
hand on Captain Salmon's ship. A bony Welsh tart gave it me, that had
made the best of my inexperience to charge me a clean girl's price, and by
the time the fraud came clear I was many a day's sail from Plymouth,
bound for Lisbon. The clap soon left me, but I ne'er forgot the wench*
When in Lisbon I found a vessel bound for Plymouth and made enquiries
amongst the crew, till at length I hit upon a one-eyed Portugee that was like
to perish of a miserable clap from Africa, beside which our English sort was
but a fleabite. This frightful wight I gave my fine new quadrant to, that
Captain Salmon had bought me to practice navigation with, on condi-
tion he share his clap with the Welsh whore at the King o* the Seas directly
he made port. But no man e'er died of the food here,"

It being midmorning, the tavern was deserted except for a young saving
maid scrubbing the flagstone floor. She was short and plump, coarse-haired
and befreckled, but her eyes had a merry light and her nose a pertness,
Leaving Ebenezer to select a table, Burlingame approached her familiarly
and engaged her in conversation which, though spoken in voices too low
for Ebenezer to hear distinctly, soon had her laughing and wagging a finger
in feigned admonition,

"The duckling swore she'd naught but fish in the larder/* he said when
presently he returned, "but when I told her 'twas a lauitsate she was feeding,
that could lay the place low with Hudibrastics, she agreed to stay year pen
with roast of beef. Twill be heie anon."

"You twit me," Ebenezer said modestly.

Burlingame shmgged. "Methinks Til change costume the while ifs
fixing. I must ask yonder cherub the way to the privy,"

"But our baggage is on the wharf,"

"No matter. Scotch cloth to silk is oft a life-time's journey, but sflk to

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 183 ]

Scotch cloth can be traversed in a minute." He went again to the serving
maid, who smiled at his approach, and spoke §oftly to her, at the same
time pinching her smartly. She squealed in mock protest and, one hand
on her hip, pointed laughing to a door beside the fireplace. Burlingame
then took her arm as though to lead her along with him; when she drew
back he whispered seriously in her ear and whispered again when she gasped
and shook her head. She glanced towards Ebenezer, who blushed at once
and feigned preoccupation with the set of his cravat; Burlingame whispered
a third message that turned her bright eyes coyly, and left the room through
the indicated door. The girl lingered for two minutes in the room. Then
she took another sharp look at Ebenezer, sniffed, and flounced through
the same door.

Though he was not a little embarrassed by the small drama, the poet was
pleased enough to be alone for a short while, not only to ponder the
wondrous adventures of his friend, which had been two days in the telling
(and the vast reaches of terra incognita he had glimpsed in the character
of the man he thought he'd known entire), but also to take stock of his
own position; to reflect a final time on the grand adventure into which
he'd flung himself and the marvelous step he was about to take.

"I have been so occupied gaping and gasping at Henry," said he to him-
self, "I have near forgot who I am, and what business I'm embarked upon.
Not a line have I writ since London, nor thought at all of logging my
journey/'

He forthwith spread before him on the table his ever-present double-
entry ledger, open to that page whereon was transcribed the first quatrain
of his official career, and fetching quill and ink from a stand on the wall
next the serving-bar, considered what should grace the facing-page.

"I can say naught whate'er of my journey hither, in the Marylandiad"
he reflected, "for I saw but little oft. Moreover, *twere fitter I commenced
the poem from Plymouth,, where most who sail to Maryland take their
leave of Albion's rocks; 'twill pitch the teader straightway on his voyage/'
Pursuing farther this line of thought, he resolved to write his epn
Marylandiad in the form of an imaginary voyage, thinking thereby to dis
cover to the reader the delights of the Province with the same freshnes'
and surprise wherewith they would discover themselves to the voyager-poet.
It was with pleasure and a kind of awe, therefore, that he recalled the name
of his ship.

"Poseidonl" he thought, "It bodes well, f faith! A very Virgil for com-

[ 184 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

panion, and the Earth-Shaker himself for fenymaster to this Elysium! What
ill can befall who sails in such company?'*

And turning the happy figure some minutes in his mind, at length he
wrote:

Let Ocean roar his damn'dest Gate:

Our Planks shan't leak; our Masts shan't fo&

With great Poseidon at our Side

He seemeth neither wild nor wide.

At the foot he appended E.G., G**\ P* & L? of M*, and beamed with
satisfaction.

"Naught succeedeth like success" he declared to himself,
While he was thus engaged, two men came into the tavern and noisily
closed the door. They were sailors, by the look of them— but not ordinary
seamen— and like enough for twins in manner and appearance: both were
short and heavy, red-nosed, squint-eyed, and black-whiskered, and wore their
natural hair; both were dressed in black breeches and coats, and sported
twin-peaked hats of the same color. Each wore a brace of pistols at his right,
stuck down through his sash, and a cutlass at his left, and carried besides a
heavy black cane,

"Thou'rt my guest for beer, Captain Scuny," growled one
"Nay, Captain Slye," growled the other, "for thou' it mine;*
With that, still standing, they both commenced to bang their sticks upon
a table for service. "Beerl" one cried, and "Beer!" cried the other, and they
glowered, scowled, and grumbled when their cries brought no response.
So fearsome was their aspect, and fierce their manner, Ebenezer decided
they were pirate captains, but he had not the courage to 8ce the room.
"Beer/" they called again, and again smote the table with their sticks to
no avail Ebenezer buried himself in his notebook, spread out before him
on the table, and prayed they'd take no notice of his presence. He knew
well, from the History of the Buccaneer*, that pirates were moved to
violence by the merest trifles; the simple fact of one's presence or the cut
of one's wig, if their mood was delicate, could provoke them to murder. He
damned the serving girl for her absence.

" Tis my suspicion, Captain Slye," one of them said, "that we must serve
ourselves or seek our man with dry throats."

"Then let us draw our beer and have done with't, Captain Scurry," re-
plied the other. 'The rascal can't be far away, 1 shall d»w two steins, and
haply he'll come in ere we've drunk 'em off,"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 185 ]

"Haply, haply/' the first allowed. "But 'tis I shall draw the steins, for
thou'rt my guest."

"The devil on7t!" cried the second. " 'Twas I spake first, and thou'rt my
guest, God damn ye!"

"I'll see thee first in Hell," said Number One. "The treat is mine."

"Mine!" said Number Two, more threateningly.

"Thine in a pig's arse!"

"I shall draw thy beer, Captain Slye," said Number Two, fetching out a
pistol, "or draw thy blood."

"And I thine," said Number One, doing likewise, "else thou'rt a banquet
for the worms."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Ebenezer cried. "In Heav'n's name hold thy
fire!"

Instantly he regretted his words. The two men turned to glare at him,
still pointing pistols at each other, and their expressions grew so menacing
that Ebenezer trembled.

" Tis none of my affair," he said hastily, for they began moving toward
him. "Not the least of my affair, I grant that. What I meant to say was,
'twould be an honor and a pleasure to me to buy for both of you, and draw
as well, if you'll but show me how. Nay, no matter, I'll wager I can do't
right off, with no instruction,, for many's the time in Locket's I've seen it
done. Aye," he went on, backing away from them, "there's naught of skill
or secret to't but this, to edge the glass against the tap if the keg be wild and
let the beer slide gently in; or be't flat, allow the stream some space to fall
ere't fill the glass, that striking harder 'twill foam the more "

"Cease!" commanded Number One, and fetched the table such a clap
of the cane that Ebenezer's notebook jumped. "I'God, Captain Slye, did
e'er ye hear such claptrap?"

"Nor such impertinence, Captain Scurry/' answered the other, "that not
content to meddle in our business, the knave would have't all his own."

"Nay, gentlemen, you mistake me!" Ebenezer cried.

"Prithee close thy mouth and sit," said Captain Scurry, pointing with his
stick to the poet's chair. Then to his companion he declared, "Ye must
excuse me while I put a ball 'twixt this ninny's eyes."

"Twill be my pleasure," the other replied, "and then we'll drisk in
peace." Both pistols now were aimed at Ebenezer.

"No guest of mine shall stoop to such mean trifles," said the first. Ebene-
zer, standing behind his chair, looked again to the door through which
Burlingaine and the serving maid had passed.

[ 186 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"My sentiments exactly/' growled Captain Slyc^ "but pray recall who's
host, or 'tis two pistols I shall fire/'

" Tore God, good Captains!" Ebenezer croaked, but legs and sphincters
both betrayed him; unable to say on, he sank with wondrous odor to his
knees and buried his face in the seat of his chair- At that instant the rear
door opened.

"Stay, here's the barmaidr cried Captain Scurry. "Fetch me two beeis,
lass, while I jettison this stinkard!"

"Beers be damnedl" roared Captain Slye, who had a view of the en-
trance door. "Yonder goes our Laureate, I swear, along the street!"

"I'faith let's at him, then/' said the other, "ere he onoe more slips his
mooring!"

Turning their backs on bear and poet alike they hurried out to the street,
from which came shortly the sound of pistols and a retreating clamor of
curses. But Ebenezer heard them not, for at mention of their quarry he
swooned dead away upon the tavern flags*

9: FURTHER SEA-POETRY, COMPOSED IN THE STABLES
OF THE KING Q> THE SEAS

WHEN HE REGAINED HIS SENSES EBENEZER FOUND HIMSELF IN THE

stables of the King o' the Seas, lying in the hay; his friend Burlingame,
dressed in Scotch cloth, squatted at his hip and fanned his face with the
double-entry ledger.

"I was obliged to fetch you outside/' said Heniy with a smile, "else you'd
have driven away the clients/"

"A pox upon the clients!" the poet said weakly. "Twas a pair of their
clients brought me to this pass!"

"Are you your own man now, or shall I fan thcc farther?"

"No farther, prithee, at least from where you stand, or I'll succumb en-
tirely." He moved to sit up, made a sour face, and lay back with a sigh,

"The fault is mine, Eben; had I known aught of your urgency I'd not
have lingered such a time in yonder privy. How is*t you did not use this hay
instead? Tis no mean second."

"I cannot make light off Ebenezer declared 'The white you sported

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 187 ]

with the wench, two pirate captains had like to put a ball betwixt my eyes,
for no more cause than that I ventured to settle their quarrel!"

"Pirate captains!"

"Aye, I'm certain oft," Ebenezer insisted. Tve read enough in
Esquemeling to know a pirate when I see one: ferocious fellows as like as
twins; they were dressed all in black, with black beards and walking sticks."

"Why did you not declare your name and office?" Burlingame asked.
44 'Tis not likely they'd dare molest you then."

Ebenezer shook his head. "I thank Heav'n I did not, for else my life had
ended on the spot. Twas the Laureate they sought, Henry, to kill and
murther him!"

"Nay! But why?"

"The Lord alone knows why; yet I owe my life solely to some poor wight,
that walking past the window they took for me and gave him chase. Past
that I know naught. Pray God they missed him and are gone for good!*'

"Belike they are," Burlingame said. "Pirates, you say! Well, 'tis not im-
possible, after all But say, thou'rt all beshit and must be scrubbed."

Ebenezer groaned. "Ignominy! How waddle to the wharf in this condi-
tion, to fetch clean breeches?"

"Marry, I said naught o' waddling, sir," said Burlingame, in the tones of
a country servant. "Only fetch off thy drawers and breeches now, that me
little Dolly maught clean 'em out, and I shall bring ye fresh 'uns."

"Dolly?"

"Aye, Joan Freckles yonder in the King o' the Seas."

Ebenezer blushed. "And yet she is a woman, for all her harlotry, and I
the Laureate of Maryland! I cannot have her hear oft."

"Hear oft!" Burlingame laughed. "You've near suffocated her already!
Who was it found you on the floor, d'ye think, and helped me fetch you
hither? Off with 'em now, Master Laureate, and spare me thy modesty.
'Twas a woman wiped thy bum at birth and another shall in dotage: what
matter if one do't in between?" And Ebenezer having undone his buttons
with reluctance, his friend made bold to give a mighty jerk, and the poet
stood exposed*

"La now/' cEuickled Burlingame. "Thou'rt fairly made, if somewhat
fouled."

"I die of shame and cannot even cover myself for filth," the poet com-
plained. "Do make haste, Henry, ere someone find me thus!"

"1 shall, for be't man or maid you'd not stay virgin long, I swear, thou'rt
that fetching/' He laughed again at Ebenezer's misery and gathered up

[ l88 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the soiled garments. "Adieu, now: thy servant will return anon, if the
pirates do not get him. Make shift to clean your self in the meantime.

"But prithee, how?"

Burlingame shrugged. "Only look about, good sir. A clever man is never
lost for long." And off he went across the yard to the rear of the King o'
the Seas, calling for Dolly to come get his prize.

Ebenezer at cJnce looked about him for some means to remedy his un-
happy condition. Straw he rejected at once, though there was enough and
to spare of it in the stable: it could not even be clenched in the hand with
comfort. Next he considered his fine holland handkerchief and remem-
bered that it was in his breeches pocket

" Tis as well," he judged on second thought, "for it hath a murtherous
row of great French buttons."

Nor could he sacrifice his coat, shirt, or stockings, for he lacked on the
one hand clothes enough to throw away, and on the other courage enough
to give the barmaid further laundry, "A clever man is never lost for long,"
he repeated to himself, and regarding next the tail of a great bay gelding
in a stall behind him, rejected it on the grounds that its altitude and posi-
tion rendered it at once inaccessible and dangerous. "What doth this teach
us," he reflected with pursed lips, "if not that one man's wit is poor indeed?
Fools and wild beasts live by mother wit and learn from experience; the
wise man learns from the wits and lives of others. Marry, is't for naught !
spent two years at Cambridge, and three times two with Henry in my
father's summerhouse? If native wit can't save me, then education shall!"

Accordingly he searched his education for succor, beginning with his
memory of history. "Why should men prize the records of the past," he
asked, "save as lessons for the present? Twene an idle pastime else," Yet
though he was no stranger to Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Suetonius,
Sallust, and other chroniclers ancient and modern, he couW recall in them
no precedent for his present plight, and thus no counsel, and had at length
to give over the attempt u Tis clear," he concluded, "that History teacheth
not a man, but mankind; her muse's pupil is the body politic or its leaders.
Nay, more," he reasoned further, shivering a bit in the breeze off the
harbor, "the eyes of Clio are like the eyes of snakes, that can see naught but
motion: she marks the rise and fall of nations, but of things immutable-
eternal verities and timeless problems— she rightly takes no notice, for fear
of poaching on Philosophy's preserve/*

Next, therefore, he summoned to mind as much as ever he could of
Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, Augustine* Thomas Aquinas, and the *est> not

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 189 ]

forgetting his Platonfcal professors and their one-time friend Descartes; but
though they'd no end of interest in whether his plight was real or fancied,
and whether it merited concern sub specie aeternitatis, and whether his
future action with regard to it was already determined or entirely in his
hands, yet none advanced specific counsel. "Can it be they all shat syllo-
gisms, that have nor stench nor stain/' he wondered, "and naught besides?
Or is't that no fear travels past their Reason, to ruin their breeches withal?"
The truth of the matter was, he decided, peering across the court in vain for
Henry, that philosophy dealt with generalities, categories, and abstractions
alone, like More's eternal spissitude, and spoke of personal problems only
insofar as they illustrated general ones; in any case, to the best of his
recollection it held no answer for such homely, practical predicaments as
his own.

He did not even consider physics, astronomy, and the other areas of
natural philosophy, for the same reason; nor did he crack his memory on
the plastic arts, for he knew full well no Phidias or Michelangelo would
deign to immortalize a state like his, whatever their attraction for human
misery. No, he resolved at last, it was to literature he must turn for help,
and should have sooner, for literature alone of all the arts and sciences took
as her province the entire range of man's experience and behavior— from
cradle to grave and beyond, from emperor to hedge-whore, from the burn-
ing of cities to the breaking of wind— and human problems of every
magnitude: in literature alone might one find catalogued with equal care
the ancestors of Noah, the ships of the Achaians

"And the bum-swipes of Garg^ntual" he exclaimed aloud. "How is't I .
did not think of them till now?" He reviewed with joy that chapter out of
Rabelais wherein the young Gargantua tries his hand, as it were, at sundry
swabs and wipers— not in desperation, to be sure, but in a spirit of pure
empiricism, to discover the noblest for good and all— and awards the prize
at last to the neck of a live white goose; but hens and guineas though there
were a-plenty in the yard around the stable, not a goose could Ebenezer
spy. "Nor were't fit," he decided a moment later, somewhat crestfallen,
"save in a comic or satiric book, to use a silly fowl so hardly, that anon must
perish to please our bellies. Good Rabelais surely meant it as a jest." In like
manner, though with steadily mounting consternation, he considered what
other parallels to his circumstances he could remember from what literature
he had read, and rejected each in turn as inapplicable or irrelevant. Litera-
ture too, he concluded with heavy heart, availed him not, for though it
afforded one a certain sophistication about life and a release from one's

[ 190 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

single mortal destiny, it did not, except accidentally, afford solutions to
practical problems. And after literature, what else remained?

He recalled John McEvoy's accusation that he knew nothing of the en-
tire great real world and the actual people in it. What, in fact, he asked
himself, would others do in his place, who did know the great real world?
But of such knowledgeable folk he knew but two at all well— Burlingarne
and McEvoy— and it was unthinkable of either that they would ever be
in his place. Yet knowledge of the world, he quite understood, went further
than personal acquaintance: how fared the savage hordes and heathen peo-
ples of the earth, who never saw a proper bum-swab? The Arabs of the
desert, who had no forest leaves nor any paper? Surely they contrived a
measure of cleanliness in some wise,, else each perforce would live a hermit
and the race die out in a single generation. But of all the customs and
exotic practices of which he'd heard from Burlingame or read in his youth-
ful books of voyages and gravel, only one could he remember that was to
the point; the peasant folk of India, Burlingame had once observed to
him, ate with their right hands only, inasmuch as the left was customarily
used for personal cleanliness.

44 Tis no solution, but a mere postponement of my difficulties," the poet
sighed, "What hope hath he for other aid, whom wit and the world have
both betrayed?"

He started, and despite the discomfort of his position, glowed with
pleasure when he recognized the couplet* "Whate'er my straits, I still am
virgin and poet! What hope hath he , , . Would Heav'n I'd ink and quill,
to pen him ere he cools!" He resolved in any case to dog-ear a leaf in his
notebook as a reminder to set down the couplet later; it was not until the
volume was spread open in his hands, and he was leafing through its empty
pages, that he saw in it what none of his previous efforts had led him to.

"Tis a propitious omen, b'm'faith!" said he, not a little awed. He
regretted having torn out in the London posthouse those sheets in the
ledger on which Ben Bragg had kept his accounts, not only because his
years with Peter Paggen had soured his taste for the world of debit and
credit, but also because he remembered how scarce was paper in the
provinces, and so was loath to waste a single sheet* Indeed, so very reluctant
was he, for a moment he seriously considered tearing out instead what few
pages he'd already rhymed on: his Hymn to Chastity, the little quatrain
recalled to him by Burlingame, and his preliminary salute to the ship
Pow'don. Only the utter impropriety, the virtual sacrilege of the deed,
restrained his hand and kd him at length to use two fresh and virgin sheets

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 191 ]

—and then two more—for the work, which completed with no small labor,
owing to the drying effect of the breeze, he turned into an allegory thus:
the unused sheets were songs unborn, which yet had power, as it were in
utero, to cleanse and ennoble him who would in time deliver them— in
short, the story of his career to date. Or they were token of his double
essence, called forth too late to prevent his shame but able still to cleanse
the leavings of his fear. Or again— but his pleasant allegorizing was broken
off by the appearance, from the rear of the King o' the Seas, of befreckled
Dolly, bringing his drawers and breeches out to dry. Despite his embarrass-
ment he craned his head around the stable entrance and inquired after
Burlingame, who had by this time been absent for nearly an hour; but the
woman professed to know nothing of his whereabouts.

"Yet 'twas but across the street he went!" Ebenezer protested.

"I know naught oft/' Dolly said stubbornly, and turned to go.

"Wait!" the poet called

"Well?"

He blushed. "Tis something chill out here— might you fetch me a
blanket from upstairs, or other covering, against my man's return?"

Dolly shook her head. " Tis not a service of the house, sir, save to them
as stop the night. Your man paid me a shilling for the breeches, but naught
was said of blankets."

"Plague take thee!" Ebenezer cried, in his wrath almost forgetting to
conceal himself. "Was Midas e'er so greedy as a woman? You'll get thy
filthy shilling anon, when my man appears!"

"No penny, no paternoster" the girl said pertly. "I have no warrant
he'll appear."

"Thy master shall hear of this impertinencel"

She shrugged, Burlingame-like.

"A toddy, then, i'God, or coffee, ere I take ill! 'Sheart, girl, I am "

He checked himself, remembering the pirate captains. "Tis a gentleman
that asks you, not a common sailor!"

"Were't King William himself he'd have not a sip on credit at lie King
o' the Seas."

Ebenezer gave over the attempt, "If I must catch my death in this foul
stable/' he sighed, "might you at least provide me ink and quill, or is that
too no service of the house?"

"Ink and quill are free for all to use," Dolly allowed, and shortly brought
them to the stable door.

t 192 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Ye must use your own book to scribble in," she declared- "Paper's too
dear to throw away,"

"And I threatened you with your master! Marry, thou'rt his fortune!"
Alone again, he set on the dog-eared page of his ledger book that
aphoristic couplet which had so aided him, and would have tried his hand
at further verses, but the discomfort of his situation made creation impos-
sible. The passage of time alarmed him: the sun passed the meridian and
began its fall toward the west; soon, surely, it would be time to board the
shallop which was to feny them to the Poseidon, and still there was no
sign of Burlingame. The wind changed direction, blew more directly off
the harbor and into the stable, and chilled the poet through. At length he
was obliged to seek shelter in an empty stall nearby, where enough fresh
hay was piled to cover his legs and hips when he sat in it* Indeed, after his
initial distaste he found himself warm and comfortable enough, if still a
trifle apprehensive— as much for Burlingame's welfare as for his own, for he
readily imagined his friend's having fallen afoul of the pirate captains. Re-
solving to cheer himself with happier thoughts (and at the same time fight
against the drowsiness that his relative comfort induced at once) be turned
again to that page in his notebook which borer the Poseidon quatrain. And
for all he'd never yet laid eyes upon that vessel, aftet some deliberation he
joined to the first quatrain a second, which called her frankly

A noble Ship, from Deck to P«dte,
Akin to those that Homers Creeks
Satfd east to Troy in Day* of Yow,

From here it was small labor to extend the tribute to captain and crew
as well, though in truth he'd met no seafaring men in his life save
Burlingame and the fearsome piiate captains. Giving himself wholly to the
muse, and rejecting quatrains for stanzas of a length befitting the «pfc» he
wrote on:

Our Captain, like a briny God,
Beside the Helm did pace and plod,
And shouted Orders at the Sty,
Where doughty Seamen, Mat-top Aigfc,
Unfurl'd and furl'd our migfity Sob,
To catch the Winds but miss the Gal* .
O noble, $dty Tritons Race,
Who br<m the wild Atlaatics Fae*
And reckless best both Wind and Tide:
God bless th*e> Ltd*, fm Albioos

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 193 ]

In a kind of reverie he saw himself actually aboard the Poseidon, dry-
breeched and warm, his gear safely stowed below. The sky was brilliant.
A fresh wind from the east raised whitecaps in the sparkling ocean,
threatened to lift his hat and the hats of the cordial gentlemen with whom
he stood in converse on the poop, and fanned from red to yellow the coals
of good tobacco in their pipes. With what grace did the crewmen race aloft
to make sail! To what a chorus did the anchor rise dripping from the bottom
of the sea and the mighty ship make way! The gentlemen held their hats,
peered down at the wave of foam beneath the sprit and up at the sea birds
circling off the yards, squinted their eyes against sun and spray, and laughed
in awe at the scrambling sailors. Anon a steward from below politely made
a sign, and all the gay company retired to dinner in the Captain's quarters.
Ebenezer sat at that worthy's right,, and no wit was sharper than his, nor
any hunger. But what a feast was laid before them! Dipping his quill ag&in,
he wrote:

Ye ask, What eat our merry Band
En Route to lovely MARYLAND?
I answer: Ne'er were such Delights
As met our Sea~$harp'd Appetites
E'er serv'd to Jove and Junos Breed
By Vulcan and by Ganymede.

There was more to be said, but so sweeter was the dream than its articula-
tion, and so thorough his fatigue, he scarce could muster gumption to
Subscribe the usual E.G., Gw*, P* & V of M* before his eyes completely
closed, his head nodded forward, and he knew no more.

It seemed but a moment that he slept; yet when roused by the noise of a
groom leading a horse into the stable, he observed with alarm that the sun
was well along in the western sky: the square of light from the doorway
stretched almost to where he sat in the straw. He leaped up, remembered
his semi-nudity, and snatched a double handful of straw to cover himself.

"The jakes is there across the yard, sir," the boy said, not visibly sur-
prised, "though I grant 'tis little sweeter than this stable/'

"Nay, you mistake me, lad But no matter. See you those drawers and

breeches on yonder line? 'Twill be a great service to me if you will feel of
them, whether they be dry, and if so, fetch them hither with all haste, for I
must catch a ferry to the Downs/'

The young man did as instructed, and soon Ebenezer was able to leave
the stable behind him at last and run with all possible speed to the wharf,
searching as he ran for Burlingame or the two pirate captains into whose

[ 194 3 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

clutches he feared his friend had fallen. When he reached the wharf,
breathless, he found to his dismay that the shallop was already gone and
his trunk with it, though Burlingame's remained behind on the pier exactly
where it had been placed that morning. His heart sank.

An old mariner sat nearby on a coil of rope belonging to the shallop,
smoking a long clay pipe*

"I say, sir, when did the shallop sail?"

"Not half an hour past/' the old man said, not troubling to turn his
eyes, "Ye can spy her yet/'

"Was there a short fellow among the passengers* that wore"— he was
ready to describe Burlingame's port-purple coat, but remembered in time
his friend's disguise— "that called himself Bertrand Burton, a servant of
mine?"

"None that I saw. No servants at all, that I saw/*

"But why did you leave this trunk ashore and freight its neighbor?**
Ebenezer demanded. "They were to go together to the Poseidon/*

" Twas none o' my doing," said the mariner with g shrug, "Mr, Cooke
took his with him when he sailed; the other man sails tonight on a different
ship/'

"Mr. Cooke!" cried Ebeneser. He was about to protest that he himself
was Ebenezer Cooke, Laureate of Maryland, but thought better of it: in
the first place, the pirates might still be searching for him— the old mariner,
for all he knew, might be in their mysterious employ; Cooke, moreover,
was a surname by no means rare, and the whole thing could well be no
more than a temporary confusion.

"Yet, surely/' he ended by saying, "the man was not Ei*nwr Cooke,
Laureate of Maryland?"

But the old man nodded "Twas that same gentleman, the poetical
wight"

"Ffaithr

"He wore black breeches like your own," the sailor volunteered, "and a
purple coat— none o' the cleanest, for all his lofty post"

"Burlingamel" the poet gasped,

"Nay, CooSe it was. A sort of poet, crossing on the Po&idon"

But for what cause would his friend assume his name and leave him
stranded in the stable of the King o' the Seas? Ebeneaer could not
fathom it

'Then prithee," he asked, with some difficulty and no little apprehension,
"who might that second gentleman be^ the owner of this tiunk here, that
sails tonight on a different vessel?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 195 ]

The old man sucked his pipe. "He'd not the dress of a gentleman/' he
declared at length, "nor yet a gentleman's face, but rather a brined and
weathered look, like any sailor. The others called him Captain, and he them
likewise."

Ebenezer paled. "Not Captain Slye?" he asked fearfully.
"Aye, now you mention it," the old man said, "there was a Captain Slye
among their number."
"And Scurry too?"

"Aye, Slye and Scurry they were, as like as twins. They and the third
came seeking the poetical gentleman not five full minutes after he'd sailed,
as you've come seeking them. But they went no farther than the nearest
house for rum, where 'tis likely you'll find 'em yet."

In spite of himself Ebenezer cried "Heav'n forfend!" and glanced with
terror across the street.

The old man shrugged again and spat into the harbor. "Haply there's
company more proper than sailors ashore," he allowed, "but none more

merry Out on't!" he interrupted himself. "You've but to read the name

from off his baggage there, where he wrote it not ten minutes past I've not
the gift of letters myself, else I had thought oft ere now."

Ebenezer examined his friend's trunk at once and found on one handle
a bit of lettered pasteboard: C^* /"* Coode.

"Nay!" His legs betrayed him; he was obliged to sit on the trunk or dis-
grace anew his fresh-dried drawers. "Tell me not 'twas Black John Coode!"
"Black or white, John or Jim, 'twas Coode," the other affirmed: "Captain
Slye, Captain Scurry, and Captain Coode. They're yonder in the King o'
the Seas."

Suddenly Ebenezer understood all, though his understanding little
calmed his fear: Burlingame, after learning from Ebenezer in the stable
about the pirates and their quarry, had spied them and perhaps Coode as
well in the neighborhood of the tavern and realized that a plot was afoot
against his charge— who as Laureate to Lord Baltimore was after all a potent,
even a potentially deadly enemy to their seditious schemes, for the exposure
of which few better tools existed than the knife-edged Hudibrastic. What
nobler course, then, or more in the spirit of faithful guardianship, than to
change to his original clothes again, declare himself the Laureate (since,
clearly, they knew not their victim's face), and throw them off the scent
by apparently embarking, trunk and all, for the Poseidon? It was a stratagem
worthy of both the courage and the resourcefulness of his friend: an
adventure equal to his escape from the pirate Thomas Pound or his
interception of the letters from Benjamin RicaudI Moreover, it had been

[ 196 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

accomplished at the risk of his own possessions, which Coode seemed now
to have appropriated. The poet's heart wanned: the solicitude, the brave
self-abnegation of his friend brought moisture to his eyes.

"And to think/' thought he^ "I was the while misdoubting him from the
safety of my horse stalll"

Very well, he resolved: he would show himself worthy of such high re-
gard. "How is't you gave this Coode leave to claim my trunk?" he
demanded of the old seafarer, who had returned to his pipe and meditations.

"Thy trunk, sir?"

"My trunk! Are you blind as well as unlettered, that you failed to see the
Laureate and me this morning when we had our trunks put down from the
London carriage?"

"Marry, I know naught oft," the old man declared. "Tis my Joseph
sails the shallop, my son Joseph, and I but mind the berth til! he returns."

"And leave your client's trunks to any rogue that claims them? A proper
ferryman you are, and your Joseph, b'm'faithl This wretch John Coode
deigns not even to counterfeit, but with your aid robs openly in broad
daylight, and by's own name! I'll have the sheriff!"

"Nay, prithee, sir!" the other cried, "My boy knew naught oft, I swear,
nor did I think to aid a robber! The meny captains strode up bold as
brass, sir, and asked for the poetical gentleman, and said This chest is
Captain Coode's and must be on the Morphides, by sundown, for the Isle
of Man/"

"And stopped thy questions with a guinea, I doubt not?"

'Two bob," the sailor answered humbly. "How might I know the baggage
wasn't his?"

"Tis compounding the felony in any case," Ebeaezer declared "Is't
worth two bob to breathe your last in prison?"

By dint of this and similar threats Ebenezer soon pemiaded the old sailor
of his error. "Yet how may I know 'tis thine, sir," he nevertheless inquired,
"now youVe raised the question? Haply 'tis thou'rt the thie^ and not
Captain Coode, and who shall save me then from jail?"

'The trunk is mine in trust alonV the poet replied, "to see it safely to
my master,"

Thou'rt a servingman, and chide me so?" The sailor set his whiskered
jaw. "Who might your master b^ that dresses Ws maa like any St Paul's
fop?" 7

Ebenezer ignored the slur, "He is that same poetical gentleman who
took the first trunk with him— Ebenezer Coofce, the Lauieate of MaiylaacL

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 197 ]

And 'twill go hard for you and your loutish Joseph should he speak of this
nonsense in the right places/'

"I' God, then take the accursed box for all of me!" the poor man cried,
and promised to send trunk and servant together to the Poseidon as soon
as the shallop returned. "Yet prithee show me just one proof or token of
your post/' he begged, "to ease my heart: for how shall I fare at the hands
of the three captains, if thou'rt the thief and they the owners?"

"Never fear/' Ebenezer said. "I shall show you proof enough in two
minutes: page upon page of the Laureate's writing." He had just remem-
bered, with a mixture of concern and relief, that his notebook was yet in
the horse stall. But the old man shook his head. "Were't branded on your
arse in crimson letters or graven like the Tables of the Law I'd not make
ftog nor dog oft."

"Try my patience no more, old man!" the poet warned. "The veriest
numskull knows a poem by the look oft, whether he grasp the sense or no.
I'll show you verses fit for the ears of the gods, and there's an end to your
caviling!" Charging the mariner as sternly as he could to safeguard
Burlingame's trunk and to ready the shallop, should it return, for instant
sailing, he made his way in a great arc across the street, giving a wide berth
to the entrance of the King o' the Seas, traversed again the alleyway leading
to the back yard of the ordinary, and with pounding heart re-entered the
familiar stable, expecting at any moment to meet tie horrendous trio of
captains. He hastened to the stall in which he'd composed his nautical
verses: there in the straw, where in embarrassment and haste he'd left it,
was the precious ledger. He snatched it up. Had that stableboy, perhaps,
defaced it, or filched a sheaf of pages? No, it was intact, and in good order.

"And reckless best both Wind and Tide" he quoted from the page, and
sighed with pleasure at his own artistry. "It hath the very sound of toss and
tempest!"

But there was no time then for such delights; the shallop might be moor-
ing at that very moment, and the villains in the tavern would not drink
rum forever. With all possible speed he scanned the remaining stanza of
the morning— those seven or eight couplets describing the shipboard feast.
He sighed again,, tucked the book under his arm, and hurried out of the
stable into the courtyard.

"Stay, Master Poet, or thou'rt dead," said a voice behind him, and he
whirled about to face a brace of black-garbed fiends from Hell, each with
his left hand leaning on an ebon cane and his right aiming a pistol at the
poet's chest.

"Doubly dead," the other added.

[ 198 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTO*

Ebenezer could not speak.

''Shall I send a ball through his Romish heart, Captain Scurry, and spare
ye the powder?"

"Nay, thankee, Captain Stye," replied the other, "Twas Captain
Coode's desire to see whatever queer fish might strike the bait, ere we have
his gullet. But the pleasure's thine when that hour comes,"

'Tour servant, Captain Scurry," said Captain Siye* "Inside with ye*
Cooke, or my ball's in thy belly,"

But Ebenezer could not move. At length, belting their pistols as un-
necessary, his fearsome escorts took each an elbow and propelled him, half
a-swoon, to the rear door of the ordinary.

"For God's sake spare mel" he croaked, his eyes shut fast

" 'Tis not that gentleman can do't>" said one of his captors. *The man
we're fetching ye to is the man to dicker with."

They entered into a kind of pantry or storage room* and one of his
captors— the one called Stye— went ahead to open another door, which led
into the steamy kitchen of the King o* the Seas.

"Ahoy, John Coode!" he bellowed. "We've caught ye your poet!"

Ebenezer then was given such a push from behind that he slipped on
the greasy tiles and fell asprawl beside a round table in the center of the
room, directly at the feet of the man who sat them. Everyone laughed:
Captain Scurry, who had pushed him; Captain Slye, who stood nearby;
some woman whom, since her feet dangled just before his eyes, Ebenezer
judged to be sitting in Coode's lap; and Coode himself. Tremblingly the
poet looked up and saw that the woman was the fickle Dolly, who sat with
her arms about the archfiend's neck.

Then, as fearfully as though expecting Lucifer himself, he turned his
eyes to John Coode, What he saw was, if rather less horrendous, not a whit
less astonishing: the smiling face of Henry Burlingame.

10: THE LAUREATE SUFFERS LITERARY CRITICISM
AND BOARDS THE POSEIDON

His friend's smile vanished. He pushed the barmaid off his lap, sprang
scowling to his feet, and pulled Ebenezer up by his shirtfroat

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 199 ]

"You blockhead!" he said angrily, before the poet could say more, "Who
gave ye leave to sneak about the stables? I told ye to scour the docks for
that fool poet!"

Ebenezer was too surprised to speak.

''This is my man Henry Cook," Burlingame said to the black captains.
"Can ye not tell a poet from a common servant?"

"Your man?" cried Captain Scurry. "I'faith, 'tis the same shitten puppy
was annoying us this morning— is't not, Captain Slye?"

"Aye and it is," said Captain Slye. "What's more, he was scribbling in
that very book there, that ye claim is the poet's."

Burlingame turned on Ebenezer again, raising his hand. "I've a mind
to box thy lazy ears! Idling in a tavern when I ordered ye to the docks!
Small wonder the Laureate escaped us! How came ye by the notebook?"
he demanded, and when Ebenezer (though he began to comprehend that
his friend was protecting him) was unable to think of a reply, added; "I sup-
pose ye found it among our man's baggage- on the wharf and marked it a
find worth drinking to?"

"Aye," Ebenezer managed to say. "That is— aye."

"Ah God, what a lout!" Burlingame de'clared to the others. "Every
minute at the bottle, and he holds his rum no better than an altar-boy. I
suppose ye took ill oft, then"— he sneered at Ebenezer— "and puked out
your belly in the stable?"

The poet nodded and, daring finally to trust his voice, he asserted, "I
woke but an hour past and ran to the wharf, but the Laureate's trunk was
gone. Then I remembered I'd left the notebook in the stable and came
to fetch it."

Burlingame threw up his hands to the captains as in despair. "And to
you this wretch hath the look of Maryland's Laureate? I aim surrounded
by fools! Fetch us two drams and something to eat, Dolly," he ordered,
"and all of you begone save my precious addlepate here. I've words for
him."

Captain Slye and Captain Scurry exited crestfallen, and Dolly, who had
attended the whole scene indifferently, went out to pour the drinks.
Ebenezer fairly collapsed into a chair and clutched at Burlingame's coat
sleeve.

"Dear God!" he whispered. "What is this all about? Why is't you pose
as Coode, and why leave me shivering all day in the stable?"
"Softly," Henry warned, looking over his shoulder. " Tis a ticklish spot

[200] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

we're in, albeit a useful one. Have faith in me: I shall lay it open plainly
when I can."

The barmaid returned with two glasses of rum and a plate of cold veal.
"Send Slye and Scurry to the wharf," he directed her, "and tell them I'll
be on the Morphides by sundown."

"Can you trust her?" Ebenezer asked when she had gone. "Surely she
knows thou'rt not John Coode, after this morning."

Burlingame smiled. "She knows her part. Fall to, now, and Fll tell you
yours."

Ebenezer did as advised— he'd had no food all day— and was somewhat
calmed by the rum, which, however, made him shudder. Burlingame peered
through a crack in the door leading into the main hall of the King o' the
Seas, and apparently satisfied that none could overhear, explained his posi-
tion thus:

"Directly I left you this morning I went straightway to the dock to fetch
fresh breeches, pondering all the while what you had told me of the two
pirate captains. Twas my surmise they were no pirates, the more for that
'twas you they sought— what use would a pirate have for a poet? Yet, from
your picture of them, their manner and their quest, I had another thought,
no less alarming, which I soon saw to be the truth, Your two black
scoundrels were there on the very dock where stood our chests, and I knew
them at once for Slye and Scurry, two smugglers that have worked for
Coode before, 'Twas clear Coode knew of your appointment and meant
you no good, though what his motives were I could but guess; 'twas clear
as well your hunters did not know their quarry's face and could be lightly
gulled. They were speaking with the lad that sails the shallop; I made bold
to crouch behind our trunks and heard the ferryman say that you and your
companion were in the King o' the Seas— happily I'd given him no name.
Slye said 'twas impossible, inasmuch as but a short time since they'd been
in the King o' the Seas, and had run out on seeing their victim in the street
but had lost him."

"Aye, just so," Ebenezer said. "Tis the last thing I recall. But whom
they spied I cannot guess."

"Nor could I, Yet the ferryman held to his stoty, and at length Slye
proposed another search of the tavern. But Scurry protested 'twas time to
fetch John Coode from off the fleet/'

"Coode aboard the fleet!"

"Aye," Burlingame declared. 'This and other things they said gave tne
to believe that Coode hath sailed disguised frpm London on the very man-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 201 ]

o'-war with the Governor and his company, who joined the fleet this morn-
ing. No doubt he fears for his cause, and wished to see first-hand what
favor his enemies have with Nicholson. Then, I gathered, Slye and Scurry
were to meet him in the Downs and fetch him to their own ship, which
sails tonight for the Isle of Man and thence to Maryland."

"I'God, the boldness of the man!" exclaimed the poet

Burlingame smiled. "You think he's bold? Tis no long voyage from Lon-
don to Plymouth."

"But under Nicholson's very nose! In the company of the very men he'd
driven from the Province!"

"Yet as I crouched this while behind our baggage," Burlingame said,

"an even bolder notion struck me But first I must tell you one other

thing I heard. Scurry asked Slye, How would they know their leader in
disguise, when they'd seen not even his natural face? And Slye proposed
they use a kind of password employed by Coode's men before the revolu-
tion, to discover whether a third party was one of their number. Now it
happened I knew two passwords very well from the old days when I'd
feigned to be a rebel: In one the first man asks his confederate, 'How doth
your friend Jim sit his mare these days?' By which is meant, How sure is
King James's tenure on the throne? The second then replies, 'I fear me
he'll be thrown; he wants a better mare/ And the third man, if he be privy
to the game, will say, 'Haply 'tis the mare wants a better rider.' The other
was for use when a man wished to make himself known to a party of
strangers as a rebel: he would approach them on the street or in a tavern
and say "Have you seen my friend, that wears an orange cravat?' That is
to say, the speaker is a friend of the House of Orange. One of the party
then cries, 'Marry, will you mark the man!' which is a pun on Queen
Mary and King William.

"On hearing their plans," Burlingame went on, "I resolved at once to
thwart 'em: my first thought was for you and me to pose as Slye and Scurry,
fetch Coode from off the man-o'-war, and in some wise detain him till we
learned his plans and why he wanted you."

" 'Swounds! Twould never have succeeded!"

"That may be," Burlingame admitted. "In any case, though I'd learned
that Slye and Scurry did not know Coode, it did not follow they were
strangers to him— indeed, they are a famous pair of rascals. For that reason
I decided to be John Coode again, as once before on Peregrine Browne's
ship. I stepped around the trunks and inquired after my friend with the
orange cravat"

[202] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Ebenezer expressed his astonishment and asked whether, considering
that Burlingame wore the dress of a servant and that Coode was supposed
to be aboard the man-o'-war, the move were not for all its daring ill-advised.
His friend replied that Coode was known to be given to unusual dress-
priest's robes, minister's frocks, and various military uniforms, for example
—and that it was in fact quite characteristic of him to appear as if from
nowhere among his cohorts and disappear similarly, with such unexpected-
ness that not a few of the more credulous believed him to have occult
powers.

"At least they believed me," he said, "once they had composed them-
selves again, and I gave 'em small chance to question. I feigned displeasure
at their tardiness, and fell into a great rage when they said the Laureate had
slipped their halter. By the most discreet interrogation (for 'twas necessary
to act as if I knew more than they) I was able to piece together an odd
tale, which still I cannot fully fathom: Slye and Scurry had come from
London with some wight who claimed to be Ebenezer Cooke; on orders
from Coode they'd posed as Maryland planters and escorted the false
Laureate to Plymouth, where I fancy they meant to put him on the
Morphides for some sinister purpose— belike they thought him a spy of
Baltimore's. But whoe'er the fellow was he must have smelled the plot, for
he slipped their clutches sometime this morning.

"Now, think not I'd forgotten you," he went on; "I feared you'd find
some other clothes and show yourself at any moment. Therefore I led Slye
and Scurry to a tavern up the street for rum and detained them as long as
possible, trying to hatch a plan for sending you a message. Every few min-
utes I looked down towards the wharf, pretending to seek a servant of
mine, and when at last I saw your trunk was gone I guessed you'd gone
alone to the Poseidon. Anon, when we walked this way agpin, the old man
at the wharf confirmed that Eben Cooke had sailed off in the shallop with
his trunk."

Ebenezer shook his head in wonder. "But "

"Stay, till I finish. We came here then to pass the time till evening; I
was quite sure of your safety, and planned simply to send a message to
you by the shallop-man, so you'd not think I'd betrayed you or fallen into
peril. When Dolly told me your notebook was in the stable I swore to Slye
and Scurry we'd catch you yet, inasmuch as a poet will go to Hell for his
no!:ebook, and stationed them to watch the stall for your return— in fact I
planned to send the book along to you anon with my message in it, and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 203 ]

used the stratagem merely to rid myself for a time of those twin apes.
Imagine my alarm when they fetched you in!"

Ebenezer remembered, with some discomfort, the scene his entrance had
interrupted.

" Tis too fantastic for words," he declared. "You thought 'twas I had
gone, and I 'twas you— I say, the fellow was wearing your coat!"

"What? Impossible!"

"Nay, I'm certain oft. The old man at the dock described it: a soiled
port-purple coat and black breeches. Twas for that I guessed it to be you."

"Dear God! Tis marvelous!" He laughed aloud. "What a comedy!"

Ebenezer confessed his ignorance of the joke.

"Only think on't!" his friend exclaimed. "When Slye and Scurry came
looking for their Laureate this morning and made sport of you, not knowing
you were he, Dolly and I had gone back yonder in the stable to play: in the
first stall we ran to we found some poor wight sleeping, a servingman by
the look of him, and 'twas he I traded clothes with on the spot. Right
pleased he was to make the trade, too!"

" 'Sheart, you mean it was the false Laureate?"

"Who else, if the man you heard of wore my coat? Belike he'd just fled
Slye and Scurry and was hiding from them."

"Then 'twas he they saw go past the window after, which saved my life!"

"No doubt it was; and learning of your trunk he must have made off
with't. A daring fellow!"

"He'll not get far," Ebenezer said grimly. "I'll have him off the ship
the instant we're aboard."

Burlingame pursed his lips, but said nothing.

"What's wrong, Henry?"

"You plan to sail on the Poseidon?'9 Burlingame asked.

"Of course! What's to prevent our slipping off right now, while Slye and
Scurry wait us on their ship?"

"You forget my duty."

Ebenezer raised his eyebrows. "Is't I or you that have forgot?"

"Look here, dear Eben," Burlingame said warmly. "I know not who
this impostor is, but I'll warrant he's merely some pitiful London coxcomb
out to profit by your fame. Let him be Eben Cooke on the Poseidon:
haply the Captain will see the imposture and clap him in irons, or mavbe
Coode will murther or corrupt him, since they're in the same fleet. Even if
he cany the fraud to Maryland we can meet him at the wharf with the

[204] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

sheriff, and there's an end to't. Meanwhile your trunk is safely stowed in
the ship's hold— he cannot touch it/'

"Then 'fore God, Henry, what is't you propose?"

"I know not what John Coode hath up his sleeve/' said Burlingame, "nor
doth Lord Baltimore nor any man else. Tis certain he's alarmed at
Nicholson's appointment and fears for his own foul cause; methinks he
plans to land before the fleet, but whether to cover all traces of his former
mischief or to sow the seeds for more I cannot guess, nor what exactly he
plans for you. I mean to carry on my role as Coode and sail to Maryland
on the Morphides, with my trusted servant Henry Cook/'

"Ah no, Henry! Tis absurd!"

Burlingame shrugged and filled his pipe. 'We'd steal a march on Coode/*
he said, "and haply scotch his plot to boot/'

He went on to explain that Captains Slye and Scurry were engaged in
smuggling tobacco duty-free into England by means of the re-export device;
that is, they registered their cargo and paid duty on it at an English port of
entry, then reclaimed the duty by re-exporting the tobacco to the nearby
Isle of Man— technically a foreign territory— whence it could be run with
ease into either England or Ireland. "We could work their ruin as well, by
deposing against them the minute we land. What a victory for Lord
Baltimorel"

Ebenezer shook his head in awe, '

"Well, come now!" his friend cried after a moment, "Surely thou'rt not
afraid? Thou'rt not so distraught about this idle impostor?"

"To speak truly, I am distraught on his account, Henry. Tis not that he
improves his state at my expense— had he robbed me, I'd be nothing much
alarmed. But he hath robbed me of myself; he hath poached upon my very
being! I cannot permit it/'

"Oh la," scoffed Burlingame. "Thou'rt talking schoolish tot What is this
coin, thy self, and how hath he possessed it?"

Ebenezer reminded his friend of their first colloquy in the carriage from
London, wherein he had laid open the nature of his double essence as
virgin and poet— that essence the realization of which, after his rendezvous
with Joan Toast, had brought him into focus, if not actually into being,
and the preservation and assertion of which was therefore his cardinal value,
"Ne'er again shall I flee from myself, or in anywise disguise it/' he
concluded. " Twas just such cowardice caused my shame this morning, and
like an omen 'twas only my return to this true self that brought me through.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 205 ]

I was cleansed by songs unborn and passed those anxious hours with the
muse/'

Burlingame confessed his inability to grasp the metaphor, and so the
poet explained in simple language that he had used four blank pages of
his notebook to clean himself with and had filled another two with sea-
poetry.

"I swore then never to betray myself again, Henry: 'twas only my sur-
prise allowed this last deception. Should Slye and Scurry come upon us
now, I'd straightway declare my true identity."

"And straightway take a bullet in thy silly head? Thou'rt a fool!"

"I am a poet/' Ebenezer replied, mustering his failing courage, "Let
him who dares deny it! Besides which, even were there no impostor to
confront, 'twould yet be necessary to cross on the Poseidon: all my verses
name that vessel." He opened his notebook to the morning's work. "Hear
this, now:

"Let Ocean roar his damnedest Gale:
Our Planks shan't leak; our Masts shan't fail.
With great Poseidon at our Side
He seemeth neither wild nor wide.

"Morphides would spoil the meter, to say nothing of the conceit."

"The conceit is spoiled already," Burlingame said sourly. "The third line
puts you overboard, and the last may be read as well to Poseidon as to
Ocean. As for the meter, there's naught to keep you from preserving the
name Poseidon though you're sailing on the Morphides"

"Nay, 'twere not the same," Ebenezer insisted, a little hurt by his
friend's hostility. " 'Tis the true and only Poseidon I describe:

44 A noble Ship, from Deck to Peaks,
Akin to those that Homers Greeks
SaiVd east to Troy in Days of Yore,
As we saiVd now to MARYLANDS Shore."

'Thou'rt sailing west," Burlingame observed, even more sourly. "And
the Poseidon is a rat's nest"

"Still greater cause for me to board her," the poet declared in an injured
tone, "else I might describe her wrongly."

"Fogh! 'Tis a late concern for fact you plead, is't not? Methinks 'twere
childsplay for you to make Poseidon from the Morphides, if you can make
him from a livery stable."

Ebenezer closed his Notebook and rose to his feet. "I know not why

[ 206 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

thou'rt set on injuring me," he said sadly. " Tis your prerogative to flout
Lord Baltimore's directive, but will you scorn our friendship too, to have
your way? Tis not as if I'd asked you to go with me— though Heav'n
knows I need your guidance! But Coode or no Coode, I will have it out
with this impostor and sail to Maryland on the Poseidon: if you will pursue
your reckless plot at any cost adieu, and pray God we shall meet again at
Maiden,"

Burlingame at this appeared to relent somewhat: though he would not
abandon his scheme to sail with Slye and Scurry, he apologized for his
acerbity and, finding Ebenezer equally resolved to board the Poseidon,
he bade him warm, if reluctant, farewell and swore he had no mind to
flout his orders from Lord Baltimore.

"Whate'er I do, I do with you in mind," he declared. "Tis Coode's
plot against you I must thwart. Think not I'll e'er forsake you, Eben: one
way or another I'll be your guide and savior."

"Till Maiden, then?" Ebenezer asked with great tears in his eyes.

"Till Maiden," Burlingame affirmed, and after a final handshake the
poet passed through the pantry and out the rear door of the King OT the
Seas, in great haste lest the fleet depart without him.

Luckily he found the shallop at its pier, making ready for another trip*
Not until he noticed Burlingame's chest among the other freight aboard
did he remember that he had posed as a manservant to the Laureate, and
repellent as was the idea of maintaining the deception, he realized with a
sigh that it would be folly now to reveal his true identity, for the ensuing
debate could well cause him to miss the boat

"Hi, there!" he called, for the old man was slipping oS the mooring-
lines. "Wait for me!"

"Aha, 'tis the poet's young dandy, is it?" said the man Joseph, who stood
in the stern. "We had near left ye high and dry."

Breathing hard from his final sprint along the dock, Ebenezer boarded
the shallop. "Stay," he ordered. "Make fast your lines a moment"

"Nonsense!" laughed the sailor. "We're late as't is!"

But Ebenezer declared, to the great disgust of father and son alike, that
he had made an error before, which he now sincerely regretted: in his
eagerness to serve his master he had mistaken Captain Coode's trunk for
the one committed to his charge. He would be happy to pay feny-fxaght
on it anyway, since they had been at the labor of loading it aboard; but the
trunk must be returned to the pier before Captain Coode learned of the
matter.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [207]

" Tis an indulgent master will suffer such a fool to serve him/' Joseph
observed; but nevertheless, with appropriate grunts and curses the transfer
was effected, and upon receipt of an extra shilling apiece by way of gratuity,
the ferrymen cast off their lines once more— the old man going along as
well this trip, for the wind had risen somewhat since early afternoon. The
son, Joseph, pushed off from the bow with a pole, ran up the jib to luff in
the breeze, close-hauled and sheeted home the mainsail, and went forward
again to belay the jib sheet; his father put the tiller down hard, the sails
filled, and the shallop gained way in the direction of the Downs, heeling
gently on a larboard tack. The poets heart shivered with excitement; the
salt wind brought the blood to his brow and made his stomach flutter.
After some minutes of sailing he was able to see the fleet against the lower-
ing sun: half a hundred barks, snows, ketches, brigs, and full-rigged ships
all anchored in a loose cluster around the man-o'-war that would escort
them through pirate-waters to the Virginia Capes, whence they would pro-
ceed to their separate destinations. On closer view the vessels could be seen
bristling with activity: lighters and ferries of every description shuttled from
ship to shore and ship to ship with last-minute passengers and cargo; sailors
toiled in the rigging bending sails to the spars; officers shouted a-low and
aloft,

"Which is the Poseidon?" he asked joyously.

"Yonder, off to starboard/' The old man pointed with his pipestem to a
ship anchored some quarter of a mile away on their right, to windward; the
next tack would bring them to her. A ship of perhaps two hundred tons,
broad of bow and square of stern, fo'c'sle and poop high over the main
deck, fore, main, and mizzen with yards and topmasts all, the Poseidon
was not greatly different in appearance from the other vessels of her class
in the fleet: indeed, if anything she was less prepossessing. To the seasoned
eye her frayed halyards, ill-tarred shrouds, rusty chain plates, "Irish pen-
nants," and general slovenliness bespoke old age and careless usage. But
to Ebenezer she far outshone her neighbors. "Majesticl" he exclaimed, and
scarce could wait to board her. When at last they completed the tack and
made fast alongside, he scrambled readily up the ladder— a feat that would
as a rule have been beyond him— and saluted the deck officer with a cheery
good day.

"May I enquire your name, sir?" asked that worthy.

"Indeed," the poet replied, bowing slightly. "I am Ebenezer Cooke, Poet
and Laureate of the Province of Maryland. My passage is already hired."

[208] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

The officer beckoned to a pair of husky sailors standing nearby, and
Ebenezer found both his arms held fast.

"What doth this mean?" he cried. Everyone on the Poseidon's deck
turned to watch the scene.

"Let us test whether he can swim as grandly as he lies/' the officer said.
"Throw the wretch o'er the side, boys/'

"Desist!" the poet commanded. "I shall have the Captain flog the lot of
you! I am Ebenezer Cooke, I said; by order of Lord Baltimore Poet and
Laureate of Maryland!"

"I see/' said the officer, smiling uncordially. "And hath His Laureateship
anyone to vouch for his identity? Surely the gentlemen and ladies among
the passengers must know their Laureatel"

"Of course I can bring proof," said Ebenezer, "though it seems to me

'tis you should bear the burden! I have a friend ashore who " He

stopped, recalling Burlingame's disguise.

"Who will swear to't through his teeth, for all you've bribed him/' de-
clared the officer.

"He lies," said the young man Joseph from the shallop, who had climbed
aboard behind Ebenezer. "He told me he was a servant of the Laureate's,
and now I doubt e'en that. What servant would pretend to be his master,
when his master's near at hand?"

"Nay, you mistake me!" Ebenezer protested. "The man who calls him-
self Ebenezer Cooke is an impostor, I swear't! Fetch the knave out, that
I may look him in the eye and curse him for a fraud!"

"He is in his cabin writing verse," the officer replied, "and shan't be
bothered/' To the sailors he said, "Throw him o'er the side and be damned
to him."

"Stay! Stay!" Ebenezer shrieked. He wished with all his heart he were at
the King o' the Seas with Burlingame. "I can prove the man's deceiving
you! I have a commission from Lord Baltimore himself!"

"Then prithee show it," the officer invited with a smil^ "and I shall
throw the other wight o'er the side instead."

"Dear God!" the poet groaned, the facts dawning on him* "I have mis-
laid it! Belike 'tis in my chest somewhere, below."

"Belike it is, since the chest is Mr. Cooke's. In any case 'tis not mislaid,
for I have seen it— the Laureate produced it on request by way of voucher.
Toss the lout over!"

But Ebenezer, realizing his predicament, fell to his knees on the deck
and embraced the officer's legs. "Nay, I pray you, do not drown me! I own

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 209 ]

I sought to fool you, good masters, but 'twas only a simple prank, a mere
April Foolery. I am the Laureate's servant, e'en as this gentleman
affirmed, and have the Laureate's notebook here to prove it. Take me to
my master, I pray you, and I shall beg his pardon. Twas but a simple
prank, I swear!"

"What say yey sir?" asked one of the sailors.

"He may speak truly/' the officer allowed, consulting a paper in his hand.
"Mr. Cooke hired passage for a servant, but brought none with him from
the harbor/'

"Methinks he's but a rascally adventurer," said Joseph.

"Nay, I jjwear't!" cried the poet, remembering that Burlingame had hired
berths that morning for Ebenezer and himself in the guise of the servant
Bertrand. "I am Bertrand Burton of St. Giles in the Fields, masters— Mr.
Cooke's man, and his father's!"

The officer considered the matter for a moment. "Very well, send him
below instead, till his master acknowledges him."

For all his misery Ebenezer was relieved: it was his plan to stay aboard
at any cost, for once under way, he reasoned, he could press his case until
they were persuaded of his true identity and the mysterious stranger's
imposture.

"Ah God, I thank thee, sir!"

The sailors led him toward the fo'c'sle.

"Not at all," the officer said with a bow. "In an hour we shall be at sea,
and if your master doth not own you, 'twill be a long swim home."

11 : DEPARTURE FROM ALBION: THE LAUREATE AT SEA

THUS IT HAPPENED THAT NOT LONG AFTERWARDS, WHEN ANCHORS WERE

weighed and catted, buntlines cast off, sails unfurled, and sheets, halyards,
and braces belayed, and the Poseidon was sea-borne on a broad reach past
The Lizard, Ebenezer was not on hand to witness the spectacle with the
gentlemen of the quarter-deck,, but lay disconsolate in a fo'c'sle hammock-
alone, for the crew was busy above. The officer's last words were frightening
enough, to be sure, but he no longer really wished he were back in the King
o' the Seas. There was a chance, of course, that the impostor could not be
intimidated, but surely as a last resort he'd let the genuine Laureate pose

[ 210 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

as his servant rather than condemn him to drown; and Ebenezfer saw noth-
ing but certain death in Burlingame's daring scheme. All things considered,
then, he believed his course of action was really rather prudent, perhaps
the best expedient imaginable under the circumstances; had he acquiesced
to it at Burlingame's advice, and were his friend at hand to lend him moral
support in the forthcoming interview, he might still have been fearful but
he'd not have been disconsolate. The thing that dizzied him, brought
sweat to his palms,, and shortened his breath was that he alone had elected
to board the Poseidon, to pose as Bertrand Burton, to declare to the officer
his real identity, and finally to repudiate the declaration and risk his life to
reach Maiden. He heard the rattling of the anchor chain, the scamper of
feet on the deck above his head, the shouted commands of the mate, the
chanteys of the crew on the lines; he felt the ship heel slightly to larboard
and gain steerage-way, and he was disconsolate— very nearly ill again, as in
his room that final night in London.

Presently an aged sailor climbed halfway down the companionway into
the fo'c'sle— a toothless, hairless, flinty-eyed salt with sunken cheeks* color-
less lips, yellow-leather skin, and a great sore along the side of his nose,

"Look alive, laddie!" he chirped from the ladder. "The Captain wants
ye on the poop."

Ebenezer sprang readily from the hammock, his notebook still clutched
in his hand, and failing to allow for the incline of the deck, crashed heavily
against a nearby bulkhead.

"Whoa! 'Sheart!" he muttered.

"Hee hee! Step lively, son!"

"What doth the Captain wish of me?" the poet asked, steadying himself
at the foot of the ladder. "Can it be he realizes who I am, and what
indignities I suffer?"

"Belike he'll have ye keelhauled," the old man cackled, and fetched
Ebenezer a wicked pinch upon his cheek, so sharp it made the tears come.
"We've barnacles enough to take the hide off a dog shark* Come along
with ye!"

There was nothing for it but to climb the ladder to the main deck and
follow his comfortless guide aft to the poop. There stood the Captain, a
florid, beardless, portly fellow, jowled and stern as any Calvinist, but with a
pink of debauchery in both his eyes, and wet red lips that would have
made Arminius frown.

Ebenezer, rubbing his injured cheek, observed a general whispering
among the gentlemen on the quarter-deck as he passed, and hung his head

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 211 ]

When he stepped up on the ladderway to the poop, the old sailor caught
him by the coat and pulled him back.

"Hold, there! The poop deck's not for the likes of you!"

"Good enough, Ned," said the Captain, waving him off.

"What is't you wish, sir?" Ebenezer asked.

"Nothing/' The Captain looked down at him with interest. "Tis Mr.
Cooke, thy master, wants to see ye, not I. D'ye still say thou'rt his man?"

"Aye."

"Ye know what sometimes happens to stowaways?"

Ebenezer glanced at the sky darkening with evening to the east and
storm clouds to the west, the whitecapped water, and the fast-receding rocks
of England. His heart chilled.

"Aye."

"Take him to my cabin," the Captain ordered Ned. "But mind ye knock
ere ye enter: Mr. Cooke is busy rhyming verses."

Ebenezer was impressed: he would not himself have dared to request
such a privilege. Whoever this impostor was, he had the manner of the rank
he claimedl

The sailor led him by the sleeve to a companionway at the after end of
the quarter-deck which opened to the captain's quarters under the poop.
They descended a short ladder into what appeared to be a chart-room, and
old Ned rapped on a door leading aft.

"What is it?" someone inside demanded. The voice was sharp, self-
confident, and faintly annoyed: certainly not the voice of a man fearful of
exposure. Ebenezer thought again of the dark sea outside and shivered:
there was not a chance of reaching shore.

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Cooke," Ned pleaded, clearly intimidated
himself, "I have the wretch here that says he is your servant, sir: the one
that tried to tell us he was you, sir."

"Aha! Send him in and leave us alone," said the voice, as if relishing the
prospect. All thought of victory fled the poet's mind: he resolved to ask no
more than mercy from the man— and possibly a promise to return, when
they reached Maryland, that commission from Lord Baltimore, which some-
how or other the impostor had acquired. And maybe an apology, for it
was, after all, a deuced humiliation he was suffering!

Ned opened the door and assisted Ebenezer through with another cruel
pinch, this time on the buttock, and an evil laugh. The poet jumped
involuntarily; again his eyes watered, and his knees went weak when Ned
closed the door behind him. He found himself in a small but handsomely

[ 212 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

furnished cabin in the extreme rear of the vessel. The floor was carpeted;
the Captain's bed, built into one wall, was comfortably clothed in clean
linen. A large brass oil lamp, already lit, swung gently from the ceiling and
illuminated a great oak table beneath. There was even a glass-fronted book-
case, and oil portraits in the style of Titian, Rubens, and Correggio were
fastened with decorative brass bolts around the walls. The impostor,
dressed in Burlingame's port-purple coat and sporting a campaigner wig,
stood with his back to the poet at the far wall— actually the stem of the
ship— staring through small leaded windowpanes at the Poseidon's wake.
Satisfied that Ned was gone, Ebenezer rushed around the table and fell to
his knees at the other man's feet.

"Dear, dear sir!" he cried, not daring to look up, "Believe me, I've no
mind at all to expose your disguise! No mind at all, sir! I know full well how
you came by your clothing in the stable of the King o* the Seas and fooled
the ferryman Joseph and his father at the wharf— though how in Heaven
you got my Lord Baltimore's commission, that he wiote for me in his own
hand not a week past, I cannot fathom/'

The impostor, above him, made a small sound and backed away.

"But no matter! Think not I'm wroth, or mean to take revenge! I ask no
more than that you let me pose as your servant on this ship, nor shall I
breathe a word oft to a soul, you may depend on'tl What would it profit
you to see me drown? And when we land in Maryland, why, IT! bring no
charge against you, but call it quits and think no more oft Nay, HI g#
thee a place at Maiden, my estate^ or pay your fare to a neighboring
province "

Glancing up at this last to see what effect his plea was having, he stopped
and said no more. The blood drained from his face.

"Nay!" He sprang to his feet and leaped at the impostor, who barely
escaped to the other side of the round oak table. His campaigner, however,
fell to the floor, and the light from the lamp fell Ml on Bertiand Burton
—the real Bertrand, whom Ebenezer had last seen in bis room in Pndding
Lane when he left it to seek a notebook at the Sign of the Raven.

JGod! F God!" He could scarcely speak for rage,

"Prithee, Master Ebenezer, sir * The voice was Bertrand's voice,

formidable no more. Ebenezer lunged again, but the servant kept the table
between them.

"You'd watch me drown! Let me crawl to you for mere?!"
"Prithee — "

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR 213

"Wretch! Only let me lay hands on that craven neck, to wring it like a
capon's! We'll see who drinks salt water!"

"Nay, prithee, master! I meant thee no ill, I swear't! I can explain all
of it, every part! Dear God, I never dreamed 'twas you they'd caught, sir!
Think ye I'd see ye suffer, that e'er was such a gentle master? I, that was
your blessed father's trusty friend and adviser for years? Why, I'd take a
flogging ere I'd let 'em lay a hand on ye, sir!"

"Flogging you shall have right soon, i'faith!" the poet said grimly, re-
versing his field in vain from clockwise to counterclockwise. "Nor shall that
be the worst oft, when I catch you!" '

"Do but let me say, sir "

"Hi! I near had thee then!"

" — 'twas through no fault of mine "

"Aft/ You knave, hold still!"

"•—but bad rum and a treacherous woman "

"'Sheart! But when I have thee "

" — and who's really to blame, sir "

"—I shall flog that purple coat from off thy back "

"—is your sister Anna's beau!"

The chase ended. Ebenezer leaned across the table into the lamplight,
brighter now for the gathering dark outside.

"What is't I heard you say?" he asked carefully.

"I only said, sir, what commenced this whole affair was the pound ster-
ling your sister and her gentleman friend presented me with in the post-
house, when I had fetched your baggage there."

"I shall cut thy lying tongue from out thy head!"

"Tis true as Scripture, sir, I sweartl" Bertrand said, still moving warily
as Ebenezer moved.

"You saw them there together? Impossible!"

"God smite me dead if I did not, sir: Miss Anna and some gentleman
with a beard, that she called Henry."

"Dear Heav'n!" the poet muttered as if to himself. "But you called him
her beau, Bertrand?"

"Well, now, no slur intended, sir; oh, no slur intended at all! I meant
no more by't than that— Ah, sir, you know full well how folks make hasty
judgments, and far be't from me "

"Cease thy prating! What did you see, that made you call him her beau?
No mor£ than cordial conversation?"

"'Sheart, xather more than that, sir! But think not I'm the sort "

[214] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"I know well thou'rt a thief, a liar, and a cheat," Ebenezer snapped
"What is't you saw that set thy filthy mind to work? Eh?"

"I hardly dare tell, sir; thou'rt in such a rage! Who's to say ye'll not
strike me dead, though from first to last I am innocent as a babe?"

"Enough/' the poet sighed, "I know the signs of old. You'll drive me
mad with your digressions and delays until I guarantee your safety. Very
well, I shan't besmirch my hands on you, I promise. Speak plainly, now!"

"They were in each other's arms," the servant said, "and billing and
cooing at a mad rate when I came up with your baggage. When Miss Anna
had sight of me she blushed and tried to compose herself, yet all the while
she and the gentleman spoke to me, they could not for the life of 'em
stand still, but must ever be at sweetmeat and honeybee, and fondle and
squeeze Are you ill, sir?"

Ebenezer had gone pale; he slumped into the Captain's chair and
clutched his head in his hands. " Tis nothing."

"Well, as I said, sir, they could not keep their hands *

"Finish thy story if you must," Ebenezer broke in, "but speak no more
of those two, as you prize your wretched life! They paid you, did they?"

"They did in truth, sir, for fetching down your baggage,"

"But a pound? Tis rather a princely reward for the task."

"Ah, now, sir, I am after all an old and trusted " He stopped half-
way through the sentence, so fierce was the look on Ebetiezer's face. "Be-
sides which," he concluded, "now I see hov/t strikes ye, 'tis likely they wished
me to say naught of what I'd seen. I tell yey sir, 'tis not for much I'd have
missed your setting out! Had not Miss Anna and her gentleman insisted
that I leave at once "

"Spare me thy devotion," Ebenezer said. "What did you then,, and why
did you pose as me? Speak fast, ere I fetch the Captain."

" 'Tis a tragic tale, sir, that shames me in the telling. I beg ye keep in
mind I'd never have presumed, sir, save that I was distracted and possessed
by grief at your arrest and in direst peril of my life,"

"My arrest!"

"Aye, sir, in the posthouse. Tis a mystery to me yet how tbou'rt free>
and how you came so rapidly from London."

Ebenezer smacked his hand upon the table. "Speak English, man!
Straight English sentences a man can follow!"

"Very well, sir," Bertrand said. "I shall begin at the beginning, if yell
bear with me." So saying, he took the liberty of sitting at the Captain's
table, facing Ebenezer, and with a full complement of moralizing asides

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [215]

and other commentary, delivered himself during the next half hour of the
following story:

" Twas a double grief I carried from the posthouse in my heart, sir, in-
asmuch as I had lost the gentlest, kindliest master that ever poor servingman
served, and could not even ckim the privilege of seeing him off to Plym-
outh in his coach, and wishing him a last Godspeed. Therefore I sought

a double physic for't. With the pound Miss Anna and her What I mean

to say, sir, I hied me to a winehouse near, at hand and drank a deal of
rackpunch, that the rogue of a barman had laced with such poisonous mo-
lasses rum I near went blind on the spot. Three glasses served to rob me
of all judgment, yet such was my pain at losing you I drank off seven,
and bought a quart of ratafia besides, for Betsy Birdsall. That is to say, not
all the bottled spirits in London could restore my own, and so at length
I fled for comfort back to Pudding Lane, to your rooms, sir. Yet well I
knew they'd seem so vacant with ye gone, 'twould but increase tenfold my
pain to sit alone, and for that cause I stopped belowstairs to summon
Betsy Birdsall— ye recall the chambermaid, sir, that had the unnatural hus-
band and the fetching laugh? We climbed the stairs together, and 'sheart!
so far from vacant,, your rooms were fit to burst with men, sir! A wight
named Bragg there was, that looked nor manlier than my Betsy's husband,
and a half-a-dozen sheriff's bullies with him; 'twas you they sought, sir,
with some false tale of a ledger-book— I ne'er made rhyme nor sense of tl

"Directly they spied me a shout went up, and they were that bent on
justice, I feared for Betsy's honor at their hands. At length I told them, in
answer to their queries, my master was at the posthouse, and off they ran

to catch ye • Nay, look not thus, sirl 'Tis not as ye think, I swear't! Not

for a moment would I have breathed the truth, had I not known your
coach was some time gone— rather would I have suffered death itself, or
prison, at their hands! But well I knew 'twas a wild-goose chase they chased,
and good riddancel

"We turned to't then, the wench and I, and with her her ratafia and me
my rum we lacked no fire to warm the sheets withal, and were that tired
when we had done, that though 'twas brightest day we slept some hours
in sweat, sack a sack. Anon I knew, by certain signs, my mount was fresh
and restless for the jumps; yet for a time I feigned to slumber on. (The
truth oft is, though the girl and I are twins in will and skill, I've twice her
years and half her strength, and more than once have cantered willy-nilly
when I yearned to walk.) There were these signs, I say, that I'd have naught
of, till Betsy made a moan and dived head foremost 'neath the covers. The

[ 2l6 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

cause wherefor I saw at once in opening my eyes, for 'twas not her hands
were on me after all, but the hands of Mister Trentice-Clerk himself,
the winehouse fiddler! Aye, I swear't, 'twas that same Ralph Birdsall,
Betsy's husband, that erst was wont to leave his field unplowed, but since
I seeded it had grown such a jealous farmer he looked to's plot five times
a day. He had come home to run another furrow, like as not, and on ad-
vice from one below— the cook's boy Tim, that long himself had leched
for Betsy—he stole upstairs to find us.

" 'Sblood, 'twas a murtherous moment, sir! I had like to smirch me for
very fright, and waited only for knife or ball. Betsy likewise, albeit her
head was buried like the ostrich's, showed great alarm: 'twas writ all over
her hinder part. Yet Birdsall himself seemed no less racked: he shivered
like a yawning cat and drew his breath unnaturally. Nor was't in wrath
his hands lay on me, as I soon saw. Great tears coursed down his cheeks,
the which were smooth as any girl's; he sniffed and bit his underlip, yet
would not speak nor smite me down.

" 'Out on't!' I cried at last. 'Here I lie, and there lies thy wife, right
roundly rogered: ye have caught us fair enough. Then make an end on't,
sir, or get thee hence!7 He then composed himself and said, that though
'twas in his rights to slay the twain of us, yet he had no taste for bloodshed
and loved his wife besides. The horns were on his brow, he said, nor
could his short-sword poll him. Moreover, he declared that in bedding
Betsy I had bedded him, forasmuch as marriage made them one; and on
this ground averred, that whate'er Betsy felt for me, he could but feel
the same— in short, to the degree I was her lover, I was his as well, and
this in the eyes of God Himself!

"Now all this Jesuitry I heard amazed, yet was right glad to remain
unpunctured, and I made bold to put him in mind of that ancient and
consoling verity, None save the mttol knows he is no cuckold. On hearing
which, the wretch straightway embraced me, and de'il I had no taste for%
'twas give him his head or lose my own. Betsy meanwhile, on hearing how
the wind blew, soon calmed her shivering hams and, throwing off the covers,
cried she had no mind to play Rub-a-dub-dub nor could she fathom how
such a bedful of women had ever got her with child. At this Ralph Birdsall
gave a mighty start and in a trembling tone enquired, was't he or I had got
the child? Whereupon my Betsy cried, * 'Twas he! 'Twas my sweet Ber-
trand!' Methought I was betrayed and cursed her for a liar; to Ralph I swore
I'd ne'er laid hands on Betsy till a fortnight past, nor swived her till a good
week after, whereas the child was three months in her belly if he was a

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 21J ]

day. 'He lies!' swore Betsy; *I swear'tf swore I. 'Nay!' swore she. "Tis full
six months I've been his whore, that had no husband to wife me! A hun-
dred times hath he climbed and sowed me, till I am full as a full-corned
goose of him!' Ralph Birdsall then fetched out his sword, that, clerk
or no, he boasted always at his hip. The truth!7 he cried, and shook all
over as with an ague. I still took Betsy for a traitor, and so declared, * Tore
God thy wife's a hellish liar, sir, but nonetheless she is no whore. May
I fry in Hell if the child is any man's but yours/

"Alas! What man can say he knows his fellow man? Who'd not have
sworn, when at last I quite persuaded Birdsall, 'twould soften his wrath—
the more for that 'twas not his horns that galled him? Yet when I'd said
my piece and he Amen'd it, he drew himself up and scowled a fearsome
scowl. Whore!' he cried at Betsy, and with the flat of his sword he fetched
her a swingeing clap athwart her seat. Nor stopped he there, but made
to run me through, and 'twas only the nimblest of legs that saved my
neck. I snatched up my breeches and dashed for the door, with the fiddler
in hot career behind, nor durst I stop to cover my shame till I was half
a square before him — Better lose pride than hide, sir, as they say. As for
my tatling Betsy, the last I saw her she was springing hither and yon
about the room, sir,, hands on her buttocks and hollowing like a hero,
nor have I seen her since. The truth oft was, as I guessed later, the
babe in Betsy's belly was the fiddler's claim to manhood, so long as he
thought himself the father; it took no more than discovering us rem in rem
to quite undo him. Twas only to save me the wench gave out the truth,
and 'sblood! I cut my throat to call her false, for albeit the cuckold lost
my trail, he'd vowed to hound me to the earth's ends and poll that horn
wherewith himself was horned!

"There was naught for it then but I must flee; yet I had but three pound
in my breeches, nor dared return for clothes or savings. I summoned a
boy who happened through the alley where I hid and sent him with the
money for shirt, hose, and shoes; then for an hour I prowled the streets,
debating what to do.

"By merest chance my way led to the posthouse, at sight of which I
could not but weep to think of your straits,, that were but little happier
than my own. 'Twas here I hit upon my plan, sir, whereof the substance
was, that though 'twas past my power to help ye, yet in your misery ye
might ransom me. That is to say, ye'd bought your passage to Maryland
and could not sail; who knew but what ye'd bought your seat to Plym-
outh as well? Think not I planned to cheat thee, sir! 'Twas but to Plymouth

[ 2l8 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

I meant to go, to save my life, and vowed to make ye restitution when
I could. I did not doubt I could play the poet, though de'il the bit I know
of verse, for I've a gift for mime, sir, if I may say so. Aye, many's the hour
at St. Giles I've kept the folk in stitches by 'personating old Mrs. Twigg,
with her crooked walk and her voice like an ironmonger's! And once in
Pudding Lane, sir, I did Ralph Birdsall to such a turn, my Betsy wept
a-laughing, nor could contain herself but let fly on the sheets for very
mirth. The only rub was, should someone challenge me I'd naught where-
with to prove my case. For that reason, though I need not say how much
I loathed to do't, I called for quill and paper in the posthouse, sir, and
as best my memory would serve me I writ a copy of your commission, the
which ye'd showed me ere ye left "

At this point, Ebenezer, who had with the greatest difficulty contained
his mounting astonishment and wrath as Bertrandrs tale unfolded, cried
out, ''Devil take it, man, is there aught of infamy you'd stop at? Steal
passage, take name and rank, and even forge commission! Let me see it!"

" Tis but a miserable approximation, sir," the servant said. "I've little
wit in the matter of language and had no seal to seal it with." He drew
a paper from his coat and proffered it reluctantly, " Twould fool no man,
I'm certain."

"Tis not Lord Baltimore's hand," Ebenezer admitted, scanning the
paper. "But i'faith!" he added on reading it. "The wording is the same,
from first to last! And you say 'twas done from memory? Recite it for me,
then!"

"Marry, sir, I cannot; 'twas some time past."

"The first line, then. Surely you recall the first line oft? No? Then thou'rt
an arrant liar!" He flung the paper to the floor. "Where is my commission,
that you copied this from?"

" Tore God, sir, I do not know."

"And yet you copied from it in the posthouse?"

"Ye force the truth from me, sir," Bertrand said, shamefaced. " Twas in-
deed from the original I copied, and not from memory; neither was it in
the posthouse I did the deed, but in your room, sir, the day ye left. The
commission was on your writing table, where ye'd forgot it; I found it
there as I was packing your trunk, and so moved was I by the grandness
oft I made a copy, thinking to show my Betsy what a master I'd lost
The original I put in your trunk and carried to the posthouse."

"Then why this sneak and subterfuge?" the poet demanded. ""Why did
you not admit it from the start? Thank Heaven the thing's not lost!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 219 ]

Bertrand made no reply, but scowled more miserably than ever.
'Well? Surely 'tis in my trunk this instant, is't not? Why did you lie?"

"I put the paper in your trunk, sir/' Bertrand said, "on the very top
of all, and fetched your baggage to the posthouse; nor thought I more oft
till the hour I've told of, when, to save my life, I vowed to 'personate my
way to Plymouth. Then I recalled my copy and luckily found it where it
had been since the hour I forged it— folded in quarters in my pocket. To
try myself I marched into the posthouse, and to the first wight I met I said,
Tm Ebenezer Cooke, my man, Poet and Laureate of die Province of
Maryland: please direct me to the Plymouth coach/"

"The brassl"

Bertrand shrugged: the Burlingamelike gesture was the more startling
performed as it was in Burlingame's port-purple coat. "Twas daring
enough," he admitted. "The fellow only stared and mumbled something
about the coach being gone. I feared he saw through my imposture, and
the more when a stout fierce fellow in black came up behind and said,
Thou'rt the poet Cooke, ye say? Thou'rt a knave and liar, for the poet
Cooke they fetched to jail not two hours past/ "

"To jail!" Ebenezer cried. "What is this talk of jail, man, that ye return
to here again?"

" 'Twas what Fd feared, sir: that wretch named Bragg, that would have
the law on ye for some false matter of a ledger-book. 'Twas only inasmuch
as I knew ye were past rescue, as I say, sir, that I presumed to use your
passage "

"Stay! Stay! One moment, now!" Ebenezer protested. "There is a mar-
velous discrepancy here!"

"A discrepancy, sir?"

"It wants no barrister to see it," the poet said. "Twas you set Bragg on
my trail, was't not, when you found him in my room? And 'twas only that
you knew I'd be long gone, you said. How is't then "

"Prithee let me finish, sir/' Bertrand pleaded, coloring noticeably. "Tales
are like tarts, that may be ugly on the face of 'em and yet have a worth-
while end. This man, I say, declared ye were in jail— a fearsome fellow,
he was, dressed all in black, with a great black beard, and pistols in his
waist. And not far behind him was another, as like as any twin, which,
when he joined the first, the man I'd queried took fright and ran. As would
have I, but for access of fear."

"They sound like Slye and Scurry!"

"The very same, sir,, they called each other: a pair of sharks as may I

[ 220 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

never meet again! Yet little I knew of 'em then but that they'd challenged
me, and so I said straight out, the man who'd gone to jail was an impostor,
and jailed for his imposture, and I was the real Ebenezer Cooke. To
prove it I displayed my false commission, scarce daring to hope they'd be
persuaded. Yet persuaded they were, and even humbled, as I thought; they
whispered together for a while and then insisted I ride to Plymouth with
them, inasmuch as the regular coach was gone. I took the boon right
readily, fearing any minute to see Ralph Birdsall and his sword "

"And fell into their hands/' Ebenezer said with relish. "By Heav'n,
'tis no more than your desertl"

Bertrand shuddered. "Say not so, sir! Hi, what a pair of fiends! No sooner
were we on the road than their intent came clear: they were lieutenants
of one Colonel Coode of Maryland, that hath designs upon the govern-
ment, and had been sent by him to waylay Eben Cooke— which quany
fearing bagged by other hunters, they were the more ready to believe
me him. What designs they had on you, sir, I could not guess, but certain
'twas not to beg a verse of ye, for they held each a pistol ready, and left
no doubt I was their prisoner. Twas not till Plymouth I escaped; one of
the twain went to see how fared their ship, and the other wandering some
yards off to rouse the stableboy at the King o' the Seas, I leaped round
a corner and burrowed into a pile of hay, where I hid till they gave o'er
the search and went inside for rum."

"Take them no farther," Ebenezer said; "I know the test of their his-
tory. 'Twas in the hay, then, that Burlingame found you?"

"Aye, sir, I heard the sound of people and trembled for my life, the
more for that their footsteps came toward me. Anon I felt a great thrashing
weight upon me, and thinking I was jumped by Slye or Scurry, I gave a
great hollow and grappled as best I could to save my life, Twas the barmaid
from the tavern I found opposing me— coats high, drawers low, and ripe
for rogering— and Miss Anna's beau stood by, laughing mightily at the
combat."

"Enough, enough! How is't you did not know each other, if as you
say you'd seen him at the posthouse?"

"Not know him? I knew him at once, sir and he me, and 'twere hard
to tell which was the more amazed. Yet he asked me nothing of my
business there, but straightway offered to change clothes with me— I dare-
say he feared my telling tales to his Miss Anna "

"Enough/" Ebenezer ordered again.

"No harm intended, sir; no injury meant. In any case I was pleased to

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 221 ]

make the change, not alone in that I had the better of the bargain but
also to escape from Slye and Scurry. Yet I went no farther than the door
of the King o' the Seas ere they spied me from inside and gave chase;
'twas only by hiding behind some baggage on a pier that I eluded them.
Then fancy my amazement, sir, when I saw 'twas your own trunk had
saved me, that I'd packed myself not long before! I knew— alas!— ye were
not there to claim it and so resolved to carry my poor deception one step
farther; to board your ship, sir, with your own commission, and hide till
I deemed it safe to go ashore. To that end, so soon as I was safe aboard
I unlocked your trunk "

'What say you?"

"Ye'd left one key with me in London, what time I packed ye. But
I found the paper gone, sir."

"Gone/ Great heavens, man, whither?"

"Lost, strayed, or stolen, sir," said Bertrand. " Twas on the very top I'd
laid it,, yet now 'twas nowhere in the trunk. I had to use my false commission
instead, which happily convinced 'em for all it had no seal. I told the
Captain to keep watch for my pursuers. The rest ye know."

Ebenezer paced the cabin wildly, his finger ends pressed against his
temples.

"When word came to me that some stranger was aboard that called him-
self the Laureate, then swore he was the Laureate's man," Bertrand con-
cluded, watching his master anxiously, "I durst not leave this room. If t
was Slye or Scurry or Coode himself, I would be murthered on the spot.
I had no choice but to stand here, sick at heart, and watch the ship get
under way. The officer then said I must inspect ye, and so sure was I of
death, I could not turn from the window till I heard your voice. How is't
thou'rt not in jail, sir?"

"Jail!" Ebenezer said with impatience. "I never was in jail!"

"Then who is't took your place? Slye vowed that when he and Scurry
searched the posthouse for ye, they heard on every side of a man who'd
been arrested not ten minutes before and carried off to jail None knew
what crime he'd done, but all knew his name was Eben Cooke,, for the
man had strode about declaring name and rank to the world."

"No doubt a second impostor," the poet replied, "bent on whoring my
office to his purpose. May he rot in irons for ever and aye! As for you, since
'twas not among your plans to make a voyage, you'll sail no farther "

'Te'll have 'em fetch me ashore?" Bertrand went to his knees in grati-

[ 222 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

tilde. "Ah marry, what a place in Heav'n is thine, sitl What an injustice
I did ye, to fear ye'd not have pity on my case!"

"On the contrary; 'tis perhaps the one injustice you did me not."

"Sir?"

Ebenezer turned away to the stern windows. "Twere well to say a
prayer before you rise; I mean you'll swim for't."

"Nay! Twere the end o' me, sir!"

"As't were of me/7 Ebenezer said, "had you not owned "

He stopped short: master and man measured each other for an instant,
then sprang together for the false commission on the floor— which laying
hold of at the same instant, they soon destroyed in their struggle.

"No matter," Ebenezer said. " Twill take but a minute with the twain
of us for any fool to judge which is the poet and which the lying knave/'

"Think better oft!" Bertrand warned. " Tis not my wish to harm ye,
sir, but if it comes to that, there'll be no judgment; I've but to send for
the man that fetched ye here and swear I know ye not."

"What! You'll threaten me too, that have already set the law upon me,
robbed me of name and passage, and well-nigh caused my death? A pretty
fellow!"

For all his wrath, however, Ebenezer was not blind to the uncertainty
of his position; he spoke no more of summoning an officer to judge between
them nor did he further question Bertrand's tale, though several details of
it failed to satisfy him. The valet had declared, for example, that only the
certainty of his master's departure had allowed him with clear conscience
to send Bragg's bullies to the posthouse; yet it was his certainty of Eben-
ezer's arrest that had allowed him, before entering the posthouse again,
to conceive the notion of posing as Laureate* How was this discrepancy
to be accounted for? And how could the commission have disappeared, if
master and servant owned the only keys to the trunk? And what had the
wretch to gain by his lying tale of Anna and Henry together in the post-
house? Or if it were no lie But here his reeling fancy failed him.

"You merit no lenience," he said in a calmer tone, "but so far shall
I let mercy temper justice, I'll speak no more of casting you astern. Haply
'twill be punishment enough to spend the balance of your years in Mary-
land, since you fear it so. For the rest, confess and apologize to the whole
ship's company at once, and let future merit atone for past defect."

"Thou'rt a Solomon for judgment," Bertrand cried, "and a Christian
saint for mercy!"
"Let us go, then, and have done."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 223 ]

"At once, at once, sir," the valet agreed, "if ye think it safe "

"How should it be otherwise?"

"Tis plain, sir," Bertrand explained, "there's more to this post of yours
than meets the eye. I know not what passed 'twixt you and Lord Baltimore,

nor is't my business to enquire what secret cause ye've sworn to further "

Here Ebenezer let forth such a torrent of abuse that his valet had need
to pause before continuing. "All in the world I mean, sir, is that your
common garden laureate is not set upon by knaves and murtherers at every
corner as I have been, nor is't a mere distaste for rhyme, methinks, that
drives this villain Coode to seek ye out. For aught we know he may be
on this ship; certain he's aboard the fleet, and Slye and Scurry as well "

"Nay, not they," Ebenezer said, "but haply Coode." He described Bur-
Kngame's strategem briefly. " 'Twas Henry bought a passage in your name,"
he explained, "and left the scoundrel stranded with the fleet."

" Twill but inflame him more," said Bertrand, "and who knows what
confederates might be with him? Belike he hath a spy on every boat!"

" 'Twere not impossible, from what I've heard of him," Ebenezer ad-
mitted, "But what's the aim of all this talk? Think you to persuade me
into skulking caution and not to tell my office to the world? Is't to weasel
out of penance and confession?"

Bertrand protested vigorously against such misconstruction of his motives.
"Confess I shall," he declared, "right readily, and mark it light penance
for my imposture— which pray recall I practiced for no vicious ends, but
to save that part which makes man man. Yet penance ne'er healed wound,
sir." He went on to praise the bounteous and forgiving nature of his master
and to upbraid himself for repaying kindness with deceit— not forgetting
to justify once more his imposture and to review, apropos of nothing, sun-
dry evidences of the high esteem and confidence in which old Andrew
held him. At length he concluded by maintaining that what he sought
was not mere penance but restitution; some means wherewith to atone
for what humiliation and discomfort his wholly innocent imposture had
occasioned the noblest master poor servingman ever served.

"And what means is't you have in mind?" the poet asked warily.

"Only to risk my life for yours," the valet said. "Whatever the cause you
serve "

"Enough, damn you! I serve the cause of Poetry,, and no other."

"What I meant, sir, is that whatever Lord Baltimore That is to

say "

"'Sblood, then say it!"

[ 224 ] J^E SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Since I have played ye to your hurt," said Bertrand, "let me play ye
to your profit. Let me dare the rascal Coode in your name, sir. If he do
me in, 'twill be my just desert and your salvation; if not, there's always
time for clean confession when we land. What say ye?"

The plan so astonished Ebenezer that he could not at once find language
strong enough to scourge the planner for his effrontery, and— alas!— the
moment till he found his tongue discovered the scheme's unquestionable
merits. The Laureateship was in truth a perilous post— of that he'd proof
enough by now, though u>/iy he'd still small notion; John Coode was un-
deniably aboard the fleet and doubtless wroth at having been duped;
Burlingame, despite his fanciful last assurances, was not on hand to protect
him. Finally and most persuasively, the poet still shuddered at his morning's
escape from Slye and Scurry at the King o* the Seas; only the appearance
of Bertrand in the street had saved his life,

"If 'twill ease your conscience," he said at last, "I cannot say ye nay,
at least for the nonce— 'twill give me time to write some verse below. But
Coode or no Coode, Bertrand, I swear you this: 'tis the last time I'll be any
man whatever save Eben Cooke. D'you hear?"

"Very good, sir/' Bertrand nodded. "Shall I send word to the Captain?"

"Word? Ah, yes— that I'm thy Bertrand, a fop that makes pretense to
glory. Aye, spread the word!"

12: THE LAUREATE DISCOURSES ON GAMES OF
CHANCE AND DEBATES THE RELATIVE GENTILITY OF
VALETS AND POETS LAUREATE. BERTRAND SETS
FORTH THE ANATOMY OF SOPHISTICATION AND
DEMONSTRATES HIS THESIS

WHEN THE POSEIDON, RUNNING BEFORE A FRESH BREEZE FROM THE

northeast, left Lizard Point behind and in company with the rest of the
fleet set her course southwest to the Azores, life on shipboard settled into
its wonted order. The passengers had little or nothing to do: aside from
the three daily messes and, for those who had the ingredients with them,
the intervening teas, the only other event of the normal day was the an-
nouncement of the estimated distance traveled during the past twenty-four
hours. Among the gentlemen a good deal of money changed hands on

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 225 ]

this announcement, and since servants, when idle, can become every bit
as bored as their masters, they too made bets whenever they could afford to.

The wagering, as a rule, was done at the second mess, since the runs
were computed from noon to noon. Upon arising in the morning, every
man sought out some member of the crew, to inquire about the progress
of the night past; all morning the company watched the wind, and finally
made their estimations. At midday the Captain himself mounted the poop
deck, quadrant in hand, and on notice from the first mate that it was
twelve o'clock sharp, made the traditional "noon sight" for longitude; re-
tiring then to his quarters he computed latitude by dead reckoning from
the compass course and the estimated distance run since the last measured
elevation of the polestar before dawn—which crucial figure was itself reck-
oned from data in the ship's log concerning the direction and velocity of
the wind, the height and direction of the seas, and the making, taking in,
and setting of the sails,, together with the Captain's own knowledge of the
direction and velocity of ocean currents in the general area at that particular
time of year, and of the ability of each of his officers to get the most
out of the men on his watch and the ship itself. Since even under full
sail the Poseidon rarely made more than six miles per hour and never more
than eight— in other words, a fast walk— the daily run could be anything
from zero, given a calm (or, given stormy headwinds, even a negative
quantity), up to one hundred ninety-two miles—which theoretical maxi-
mum, however, she never managed to attain. Having computed latitude and
longitude, the Captain was able to plot the Poseidon's estimated position
on his chart with parallel rule and dividers and, again allowing for winds,
currents, the leeway characteristics of his vessel, and compass variation,
he could give the helmsman a corrected course to steer until further notice.
Finally he would enter the main cabin for his midday meal with the ladies
and gentlemen among his passengers, who in the meantime had pooled
their wagers and their estimates and, after announcing the official figure,
he would bid the mate search out the closest approximation from among
the folded bits of paper and identify the winner of the day.

The basic gamble was the pool— five to ten shillings a head, usually, for
the gentlemen and ladies; a shilling or less for the servants— but the more
ambitious speculators soon contrived a variety of side bets: a maximum
or minimum figure, for example, could be adjusted for virtually any odds
desired, or one could gamble on a maximum or minimum differential be-
tween each day's run and the next one. As the five days passed and boredom
increased, the sport grew more elaborate, the stakes higher: one really im-

[226] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

aginative young minister named George Tubman, suspected by the other
passengers of being a professional gambler in disguise, devised a sliding-
odds system for accepting daily bets on the date of raising Flores and Corvo
—the westerly isknds of the Azores— a system whereby the announcement
of each day's run altered the standing odds against each projected date-
of-landfall according to principles best known to the clever young man
who computed them, and one could in the light of each day's progress
make new wagers to reinforce or compensate for the heightened or dimin-
ished probability of one's previous wagers on the same event. This system
had the advantages of cumulative interest and a tendency towards
geometrically increasing stakes, for when a man saw his whole previous
speculative investment imperiled by an unusually long or short day's run,
he was naturally inclined to cover himself by betting, on what now seemed
a more promising date, an amount equal to or exceeding the sum of his
prior wagers; and since, of course, each day brought the Poseidon closer
to a landfall and narrowed the range of speculation, the odds on the most
likely dates lowered sharply, with the result that a man might invest five
pounds at the going odds on a currently popular date in order to cover ten
shillings previously wagered on a now unlikely one, only to find two or three
days later that a third, much larger, bet was required to make good
the second, or the first and second combined, and so forth. The excitement
grew proportionately; even the Captain, though he shook his head at the
ruinous size of the stakes, followed the betting with unconcealed interest,
and the crew members themselves, who, of course, would not have been
permitted to join in the game even if they could have afforded it, adopted
favorites among the bettors, gave, or when possible sold, "confidential" in-
formation on the ship's progress to interested parties, made private little
wagers of their own on which of the passengers would win the most money,
and ultimately, in order to protect their own bets, volunteered or accepted
bribes to convey false information to bettors other than the one on whom
their money was riding.

For his part, Ebenezer wasted little interest at the outset on this activity,
to which his attention had been called early in the first week of the voyage.
One sparkling April morning Bertrand had approached him where he stood
happily in the bow watching seagulls dive for fish, and had asked, in a
respectful tone, his general opinion of gambling. In good spirits because
of the weather and a commendable breakfast, and pleased to be thus con-
sulted, Ebenezer had explored the subject cheerfully and at length.

'To ask a man what he thinks of gambling is as much as to ask him what

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 227 ]

he thinks of life/' was one of the positions he experimented with. "Doth
not the mackerel gamble, each time he rises, that yonder gulls won't snatch
him up, and the gulls make wager that they will? Are we not gamblers
all, that match wits with the ocean on this ship of wood? Nay, life itself
is but a lifelong gamble, is't not? From the moment of conception our
life is on the line; every meal, every step, every turning is a dare to death;
all men are the fools of chance save the suicide, and even he must wager
that there is no Hell to fry in. Who loves life, then, perforce loves gambling,
for he is Dame Chance's conquest. Moreover, every gambler is an optimist,
for no man wagers who thinks to lose."

Bertrand beamed. 'Then ye favor games of chance?"

"Ah, ah/' the Laureate cautioned. He cocked his head, waggled a fore-
finger, and quoted a proverb which unaccountably made him blush: "There
are more ways to the woods than one. It could as well be argued that the
gambler is a pessimistic atheist, inasmuch as he counts man's will as naught.
To wager is to allow the sovereignty of chance in all events, which is
as much as to say, God hath no hand in things."

"Then ye don't look kindly on't after all?"

"Stay, not so fast: one could as readily say the contrary— that your
Hobbesian materialist should never be a gambler, for no man gambles
that doth not believe in luck, and to believe in luck is to deny blind chance
and cold determinism, as well as the materialist order of things. Who
says Yea to Luck, in short, had as well say Yea to God, and conversely."

"In Heav'n's name, then!" Bertrand cried, rather less respectfully than
at first. "What do ye think of gambling— yea or nay?"

But Ebenezer would not be pressed. " Tis one of those questions that
have many sides," he said blithely, and by way of indicating that, for the
present at least, he'd nothing farther to say on the subject turned his atten-
tion again to the gulls: Contrary to his expectations,, his position aboard
the Poseidon was turning out to be by no means altogether unpleasant.
He had contrived to establish himself as being not another common servant
but a kind of amanuensis to the Laureate, in which capacity he was per-
mitted access to the quarter-deck at Bertrand's side and limited converse
with the gentlemen; there was no need to conceal his education, since
positions of the sort he pretended to were frequently filled by destitute
scholars, and by making Bertrand out to be the lofty, taciturn variety of
genius, he hoped to be able to speak for him more often than not and
thus protect their disguise. Moreover, he could devote as much time as
he chose to his notebook and even borrow books from the gentlemen pas-

f 228 ] THE. SOT-WEED FACTOR

sengers without arousing suspicion; an amanuensis was expected to busy
himself with ink, paper, and books, especially when his employer was a poet
laureate. In short, it became ever more clear to him as the voyage progressed
that his role offered most of the privileges of his true identity and none of
the dangers, and he counted the disguise among his happiest inspirations.
While the servants relieved their ennui with gambling and gossip about
their masters and mistresses, and the ladies and gentlemen with gambling
and gossip about one another, Ebenezer passed the hours agreeably in the
company of his own work or that of celebrated authors of the past, with
whom, since his commission, he felt a strong spiritual kinship.

Indeed, the only thing he really found objectionable, once his initial
embarrassment was forgotten and he had grown accustomed to his position,
was mealtimes. For one thing, the food was not what he had imagined: the
last entry in his notebook, made just before he fell asleep in the stable
of the King o' the Seas, had been:

You ask, What eat our merry Band
En Route to lovely MARYLAND?
I answer. Ne'er were such Delights
As met our Sea-sharp* d Appetites
E'er serv'd to Jove and Junos Breed
By Vulcan and by Ganymede*

To which, during his very first day as Bertrand's amanuensis, he had ap-
pended:

The Finest from two Hemispheres,
From roasted Beef to Quarter1 d Deers;
The Best of new and antick Worlds,
Fine curry7 d Lamb and basted Squirrek.
We wash'd all down with liquid cheer —
Barbados Rum and English Beer.
'Twere vain to seek a nobler Feast
In legend' d West or story' d East,
Than this our plenteous Shipboard Store
Provided fey LORD BALTIMORE,

This even though he had in fact seen nothing at either breakfast or dinner
more exotic than eggs, fresh veal, and a few indifferently prepared vegetables.
But three days sufficed to exhaust the Poseidon's store of every perishable
foodstuff; on the fourth appeared instead, to Ebenezer's unhappy surprise,
the usual fare of sailors and sea-travelers: a weekly ration of seven pounds
of bread or ship biscuit for master and man alike, with butter scarce enough

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [229]

to disguise its tastelessness; half a pound of salt pork and dried peas per
man each mess for five days out of the week, and on the other two salt
beef instead of pork— except when the weather was too foul for the cook
to boil the kettle, in which case every soul aboard made do for the day with
a pound of English cheese and dreams of home.

All this, however, was mere disillusionment, the fault not of Lord Balti-
more, the captain of the Poseidon, or the social order, but merely of Eben-
ezer's own naivete or, as he himself felt mildly, not troubling to put it
into words, of the nature of Reality, which had failed to measure up to
his expectations. In any case, though the food grew no more palatable, he
soon became sufficiently inured to it not to feel disappointed between meals,
A more considerable objection— which led him one afternoon to profess
his discontent to Bertrand— was that he had to eat with the servants after
the ladies and gentlemen were finished.

"Think not 'tis the mere ignominy oft," he assured his valet hastily,
"though in truth they are an uncouth lot and are forever making sport of
me. Tis you I fear for; that you'll be drawn into talk at the Captain's table
and discover yourself for an ass. Thrice daily I wait for news of your dis-
grace, and despair of carrying the fraud to Maryland!"

"Ah, now, sir, have no fear." They were in the ship's waist, and Bertrand
seemed less concerned with Ebenezer's complaint than with watching a
young lady who stood with the Captain by the taffrail. "There's no great
trick to this gentleman business, that I can see; any man could play the
part that hath a ready wit and keeps his eyes and ears open."

"Indeed! I'd say so much for my disguise, perhaps; they are no fools
you dine with, though, but men of means and breeding."

But so far from being chastened by this remark, the valet actually chal-
lenged it, still watching the maid more than his master while he talked.

"Marry, sir, none knows better than your servant the merits of wealth
and birth/' he declared benignly. "Yet, may I hang for't if any man was
e'er more bright or virtuous for either." He went on to swear by all his
experience with fine ladies and gentlemen, both as their servant and as
their peer, that no poor scullery maid among Ebenezer's messmates was
more a hussy than yonder maiden on the poop deck, for example, whom
he identified as one Miss Lucy Robotham. "For all her fine clothes and
fancy speech, sir, she blushed not a blush this noontime when the Captain
pinched her 'neath the table, but smartly pinched him back! And not a
half hour later, what time I took her hand to help her up the stairway,
what did she do if not make a scratching in my palm? A whore's a whore

[ 2 JO ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

whate'er her station" he concluded, "and a fool a fool whate'er his wealth!9

Ebenezer did not question the verity of this democratic notion, but he
denied its relevance to the problem. " Tis not character and mother wit
that make your gentleman, Bertrand," he said, adding the name in order
to draw his man's eyes from Miss Robotham. " 'Tis manners and education.
By a thousand signs the gentleman knows his peer— a turn of phrase, a
choice of wine, a flourish of the quill— and by as many spies the fraud or
parvenu. Be you never so practiced at aping 'em, 'tis but a matter of time
till they find you out. A slip of the tongue, a slip of the fork: any trifle
might betray you."

"Aye," laughed the other, "but for what, prithee?"

"Why, for not a gentleman 'to the manner born/ as't were!" Ebenezer
was disturbed by the increasing arrogance of his servant, who had not
wanted presumption to begin with. "How shall you answer them book for
book, that have no books to your credit? How shall you hold forth on the
new plays in London or the state of things on the Continent, that have
not been through a university? Your true authentic gentleman is gallant
but not a fop, witty but no buffoon, grave but not an owl, informed but
not a pedant— in sum, he hath of every quality neither excess nor defect,
but the very Golden Mean."

To which the valet rejoined with a wave and a smile, "Haply so, f faith,
haply so!" And might have said more had not Ebenezer, his interest in
the matter fanned by his growing irritation, at once resumed his discourse.

"And just as the speech of the gentleman is to the speech of the crowd
as is the lark's song to the rooster's but that of the poet like an angel's
to the lark's, so the gentleman himself is a prince among men, and the
poet should be a prince among gentlemen!"

"Haply so, sir, haply 'tis so," Bertrand said again, and turning now to
his master added, "But would ye believe it? So wretched is this memory
of mine, that though I wrote out your commission word for word in ink,
and saw clear as gospel where it caused a gentleman to be a laureate poet,
I cannot summon up the part that makes your laureate be a gentleman!
And so miserable are these eyes and ears, they've tricked me into thinking
all the poets they e'er laid hold of— such as Masters Oliver, Trent, and
Merriweather back in London, to name no farther— that all these rhyming
wights have not a Golden Mean between 'em, nor yet a Brass or Kitchen-
copper! 'Sblood, to speak plainly, they are sober as jackanapes, modest as
peacocks, chaste as billy goats, soft-tongued as magpies, brave as church-
mice, and mannerly as cats in heat! Your common, everyday valet, if I may

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 231 ]

say so, is like to be twice the gentleman your poet e'er could dream of!
Nay, he's oft a nicer spirit than the gentleman his master, as all the world
knows, and hath not his peer for how wigs should be powdered or guests
placed at table. 'Tis he and not your poet, I should say, that is the gentle-
man's gentlemanl"

Ebenezer was too taken aback by this outburst to do more than squint
his eyes and cry "Stay!" But Bertrand would not be put off.

"Yet as for that," he went on, " 'tis little stead my gentleman's lore stands
me, now I'm a laureate poet! Marry, the ladies and gentlemen I've met,
so far from seeing their poet as a gentleman, look on him as a sort of saint,
trick ape, court fool, and gypsy soothsayer rolled in one. Your ladies tell
me things no Popish priest e'er heard of, fuss over me as o'er a lapdog, and
make me signs a gigolo would blush at; they worship and contemn me
by turns, as half a god and half a traveling clown. And the gentlemen,
f God! They think me mad or dullwitted out of hand; for who but your
madman would turn his hand to verse, save one too numskulled to turn
it to money? In short and in sum, sir, they'd call me no poet at all, or a
poor one at best, if e'er I should utter e'en a sensible remark, to say nothing
of a civil But think not I'm so fond as that!"

Ebenezer's features roiled, settling finally into a species of frown. Really,
the fellow had got impossible! Both men were given wholly to the argu-
ment now, which had perforce to be conducted in low tones; they faced
seawards, their elbows on the rail and their backs to Miss Robotham, who
had descended from the high poop to the quarter-deck on the opposite
side of the vessel.

"I grant you this," he said, "that a prating coxcomb of a poet may be
guilty of boorishness, as a bad valet may be guilty of presumption, and
both may be guilty of affectation; I grant you farther that the best poet
is never in essence a gentleman "

"Unlike your best valet," Bertrand put in.

"As for that," Ebenezer said sharply, "your valet that outshines his mas-
ter in's knowledge of etiquette and fashion is like the rustic that can
recite more Scripture than the theologian: his single gift betrays his limita-
tions. The gentleman valet and the gentleman poet have this in common,
that their gentlemanliness is for each a mask. But the mask of the valet
masks a varlet, while the poet's masks a godl"

"Oh la, sir!"

"Let me finish!" Ebenezer's eyes were bright, his blond brows crooked
and beetled. "Who more so than the poet needs every godlike gift? He

[232] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

hath the painter's eye, the musician's ear, the philosopher's mind, the bar-
rister's persuasion; like a god he sees the secret souls of things, the essence
'neath their forms, their priviest connections. Godlike he knows the springs
of good and evil: the seed of sainthood in the mind of murtherer,. the worm
of lechery in the heart of a nun! Nay, farther: as the poet among gentle-
men is as a pearl among polished stones, so must the Laureate be a diamond
in the pearls, a prince among poets, their flower and exemplar— even a
prince among princes! To him do kings commit their secular immortality,
as they commit their souls' to God! Small mystery that the first verse was
religious and the earliest poets pagan priests, as some declare, or that Plato
calls the source of poetry a divine madness like that of seers and sibyls. If
your true poet strays from the path of good demeanor, 'tis but the mark
of his calling, an access of the muse; yet the laureate, though in truth he
hath by necessity the greatest infusion of this madness, must exercise a
truly godlike self-restraint, for he is to men the ambassador and emblem
of his art: he is obliged not only to his muse, but to his fellow poets as
well."

Thus argued the Laureate, whose esteem for his office had risen with each
meal at the servants' mess; nor could Bertrand's most eloquent defense of
the art of valetry quite mollify his discontent.

" 'Tis your wish, then," Bertrand asked finally, "that in all things I play
the gentleman?"
"In every way."

"And take their actions as my model?"
"Nothing less."

"Why, then, I must beg some money of ye, sir," he declared with a laugh,
and explained that the last ten shillings of his own small savings had that
very noon been sacrificed in the distance-run pool, in which as a gentleman
he was absolutely obliged to participate.

"Ah, 'twas for that you asked my thoughts on gambling some while past."

"I must confess it," Bertrand said, and reminded his master that as much

could be said in favor of gambling as against it. "Besides which, sir, I must

keep on with't now I've begun, as well to guard our masks as to make good

my losses."

Now, Ebenezer himself had in reserve only what little he'd saved from
his years with the merchant Peter Paggen, the whole of which did not
exceed forty pounds; but at Bertrand's insistence that no smaller sum would
do, he fetched out twenty from his trunk and, returning to the rail where

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 233 ]

his proxy waited, passed him the money surreptitiously with suitable ad-
monitions and enjoinders.

At this point their conversation was interrupted by that same Miss
Robotham earlier aspersed by Bertrand; at a thump on the shoulder they
turned to find her standing close behind them, and Ebenezer paled at the
thought of what perhaps she'd heard.

"Madam!" he said, whipping off his hat. "Your servant!"

" Tis your master I want/' the girl said, and turned her back to him.
She was a brown-haired, excellently breasted maid of twenty years or so,
and though a certain grossness both of manner and complexion showed
a rustic, or at least colonial, essence beneath the elegance of her dress, yet
it seemed likely to Ebenezer that she was more innocent than concupiscient.
In fact, for the first time since describing his plight to Henry in the Plym-
outh coach, he was reminded of Joan Toast, his delicate concern for whom
had precipitated his departure from London: there was some similarity in
eyes and skin and forthright manner.

Bertrand, who had made no move to duplicate his master's courtesy,
leaned upon the railing and regarded the visitor with a look of crude ap-
praisal. Not daunted in the least, she clasped her hands pertly, bounced a
few times on her heels, and said, "I've a literary question for you, Mr.
Cooke."

"Aha," said Bertrand, and chucked her under the chin. "What hath a
tight young piece like you to do with literature, pray?"

Ebenezer, as alarmed by the request as by his man's vulgarity, made
haste to offer his services instead, suggesting that the Laureate should not
be bothered with trifling questions.

"Then what's the use of him?" the maid demanded, feigning a pout.
Then she pursed her lips, arched her brows, and added merrily, still in
Bertrand's direction, "Am I to suffer his lecherous stares for naught? He'll
say what poet wrote Out, out, strumpet Fortune, and say't this instant,
else my father shall know what poet tweaked me noontime where I blush
to mention and left me a bruise to show for't!"

"The moral to that," Bertrand said, "is, Who hath skirts of straw must
needs stay clear of fire."

"Moral! Thou'rt a proper priest to speak of morals! Enough now: who
said Out, out, strumpet Fortune, Shakespeare or Marlowe? I've two bob
on't with Captain Meech, that thinks him such a scholar."

Alarmed lest his servant give the game away, either by his reply or by

[234] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

his conduct^ Ebenezer was about to interrupt with the answer, but Bertrand
gave him no opportunity.

"Captain Meech, is't!" he exclaimed, with a teasing frown and a sidelong
look. 'Til bet two bob myself that for any bruise o' mine ye've three of
his to sit on!"

Miss Robotham and Ebenezer both protested, the latter genuinely.

"No? Take a pound on't, then," Bertrand laughed. "My pound against
your shilling. But mind, I must see the proof myself!" He then asked what
poet she'd bet on, offering to swear that man had penned the line.

"The Laureate hath not his peer for gallantry," Ebenezer observed with
relief to Miss Robotham's youthful back. "And in sooth, if chivalry be
served, what matters it that William "

"Oh no," the girl protested, cutting him off, 'Til have no favors from
you, Mister Laureate, for I well know what 'twill cost me in the end! Be-
sides which, I know the answer for a fact, and want no more than to hav't
confirmed:

Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! Ml you gods

In general synod take away her power.

Knock all her spokes and fellies out,

And bowl the round nave down the hill of Heaven,

As low as to the fiends!"

"Well done, well done!" Ebenezer applauded. "The Player himself
pleased Hamlet no more with't than you "

"Marry, all those knaves and strumpets!" Bertrand exclaimed. "Whoever
wrote it is a randy wight, now, ain't he? To speak the truth, young lady,
I might have scratched it out myself, for aught I know."

"If you please, ma'am!" Ebenezer cried, aghast at Bertrand's ignorance
and the peril of the situation. This time he forced himself between them
and took her arm as though to lead her off. "You must forgive my rudeness,
but I cannot let you annoy the Laureate farther!"

"Annoy him!" Miss Robotham snatched her arm away. "Me annoy him!'7

"I quite commend your interest in verse, which is rare enough e'en in
a London girl," the poet went on, speaking rapidly and glancing about to
see if others were watching them, "and 'tis no reflection on your rearing
that you presume so on this great man's gallantry, seeing thou'rt from the
plantations; yet I must explain "

"Hear the wretch!" Miss Robotham applied for sympathy first to an
imaginary audience and then specifically to Captain Meech, whom she saw

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 235 1

approaching from aft, "I ask Mr. Cooke a civil question, and this fellow
calls me a mannerless bumpkin!"

"Never mind him," the Captain said good-humoredly, not without a
brief scowl at the offender. "Who wins the bet?"

"Oh, everybody knows 'twas Shakespeare wrote it," she said, "but Mr.
Cooke's as great a tease as you: he swears 'twas he himself."

"Grand souls are ever wont to speak in epigrams," Ebenezer explained
desperately. "Haply it seemed a mere tease on the face oft, but underneath
'tis deep enough a thought: the Laureate means that one great poet feels
such kinship with another, in's the service of the Muse, 'tis as if Will Shakes-
peare and Ebenezer Cooke were one and the selfsame man!"

"My loss, then," sighed the Captain, more in reply to Miss Robotham's
remark than to Ebenezer's. "Henceforth," he promised Bertrand, "I'll
stick to my last and leave learning to the learned."

"Heav'n forbid!" Bertrand laughed. He had paid no heed whatever to
Ebenezer's previous alarm. "I lose enough on your seamanship without
betting against ye in the pool!"

Captain Meech then declaring with a wink that all his money was in
his quarters, Miss Robotham strode off on his arm to collect her winnings.

Bertrand looked after them enviously. "By God, that is a saucy piece!"

"Tis all up with us!" Ebenezer groaned, as soon as the couple was
out of earshot. "You've spiked our guns for fair!" He turned again to
the ocean and buried his face in his hands.

"What? Not a bit oft! Did ye see how she purred when I chuckled her
chin?"

"You treated her like a two-shilling tart!"

"No more than what she is," Bertrand said. "D'ye think she's playing
at cards with Meech right now?"

"But her father is Colonel Robotham of Talbot County, that used to
sit on the Maryland Council!"

Bertrand was unimpressed. "I know him well enough. Yet 'tis a queer
father will hear his daughter prate of knaves and strumpets, I must say,
and recite her smutty verses at the table."

"God save us!" cried the Laureate. "Where were we now had I not been
here to gloss your answer and turn your babbling into sense? Marry, if
you don't discover us with your blunders, you'll have us horsewhipped
with your foul behavior! Speak no more of the valet's refinement, i'God;
I've seen enough oft, and of his ignorance!"

"Ah now, compose thyself," said Bertrand. "Twas the Laureate I was

[ 236 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

playing, not the valet, or ye'd have seen refinement and to spare. I knew
what I was about."

"You knew "

"As for this same raillery and bookish converse your fine folk set such
store by/' he went on testily, "any gentleman's gentleman like myself that
hath stood off a space and seen it whole can tell ye plainly the object oft,
which is: to sound out the other fellow's sentiments on a matter and
then declare a cleverer sentiment yourself. The difference here 'twixt simple
and witty folk, if the truth be known, is that your plain man cares much
for what stand ye take and not a fart for why ye take it, while your smart
wight leaves ye whatever stand ye will, sobeit ye defend it cleverly. Add to
which, what any valet can tell ye, most things men speak of have but two
sides to their name, and at every rung on the ladder of wit ye hear one
held forth as gospel, with the other above and below."
"Ladder of wit! What madness is this?" Ebenezer demanded.
"No madness save the world's, sir, if ye'll see the matter whole. Take
your wig question, now, that's such a thing in London: whether to wear
a bob or a full-bottom peruke. Your simple tradesman hath no love for
fashion and wears a bob on's natural hair the better to labor in; but give
him ten pound and a fortnight to idle, he'll off to the shop for a great
French shag and a ha'peck of powder, and think him the devil's own fellow!
Then get ye a dozen such idlers; the sharpest among 'em will buy him
a bob wig with lofty preachments on the tyranny of fashion— haven't I
heard 'em!— and think him as far o'er his full-bottomed fellows as they
o'er the merchants' sons and bob-haired 'prentices. Yet only climb a rung
the higher, and it's back to the full-bottom, on a sage that's seen so many
crop-wigs feigning sense, he knows 'tis but a pose of practicality and gets
him a name for the cleverest of all by showing their sham to the light of
day. But a grade o'er him is the bob again, on the pate of some philosopher,
and over that the full-bottom, and so on. Or take your French question:
the rustical wight is all for England and thinks each Frenchman the Devil
himself, but a year in London and he'll sneer at the simple way his farm
folk reason. Then comes a man who's traveled that road who says, Tlague
take this foppish shill-I, shall-l! When all's said and done 'tis England
to the end!'; and after him your man that's been abroad and vows 'tis not
a matter of sMl-I, shall-I to one who's traveled, for no folk are cleverer
than the clever French, 'gainst which your English townsman's but a bump-
kin. Next yet's the man who's seen not France alone but every blessed
province on the globe; he says 'tis the novice traveler sings such praise

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 237 ]

for Paris—the man who's seen 'em all comes home to England and carries
all's refinement in his heart. But then comes your grand skeptical philos-
opher, that will not grant right to either side; and after him a grander,
that knows no side is right but takes sides anyway for the clever nonsense
oft; and after him your worldly saint, that says he's past all talk of wars and
kings fore'er, and gets him a great name for virtue. And after him "

''Enough, I beg you!" Ebenezer cried, "My head spinsl For God's sake
what's your point?"

"No more than what I said before, sir: that de'il the bit ye've tramped
about the world, and bleared your eyes with books, and honed your wits
in clever company, whate'er ye yea is nay'd by the man just a wee bit simpler
and again by the fellow just a wee bit brighter, so that clever folk care less
for what ye think than why ye think it. 'Tis this that saves me."

But Ebenezer could not see why. " Tis that shall scotch you, I should
fancy! A fool can parrot a wise man's judgment but never hope to defend
it."

"And only a fool would try/' said Bertrand, with upraised finger. 'Your
poet hath no need to."

Ebenezer's features did a dance.

"What I mean, sir," Bertrand explained, "when they come upon me with
one of their mighty questions—only yestere'en, for instance, they'd have
me say my piece on witchery, whether I believed in it or no— why, all
I do is smile me a certain smile and say, Why not?' and there's an end
on'tl The ones that agree are pleased enough, and as for the skeptical
fellows, they've no way to tell if I'm a spook-ridden dullard or a breed of
mystic twice as wise as they. Your poet need never trouble his head to
explain at all: men think he hath a passkey to Dame Truth's bedchamber
and smiles at the scholars building ladders in the court. This Civility and
Sense ye preach of are his worst enemies; he must pinch the ladies' bosoms
and pull the schoolmen's beards. His manner is his whole argument, as't
were, and that certain whimsical smile his sole rebuttal."

"No more," Ebenezer said sharply. "I'll hear no more!"

Bertrand smiled his whimsical smile. "Yet surely 'tis the simple truth?"

"There is skin of truth on't, yes," the Laureate granted; "but 'tis like
the mask of sense on a madman or a film of ice on a skaters' pond— it
only makes what lies beneath more sinister."

Just then the bell was rung for the gentlemen and ladies to come to
supper.

[ 238 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Tis our goose that's cooked/7 Ebenezer said gloomily. "You'll see
this hour Miss Robotham marked your ignorance/'

"Haply so/7 said Bertrand with his smile, "but I'd stake your last farthing
she thinks I'm a bloody Solomon. We'll know soon enough who's right."

It was, in fact, closer to four hours before the Laureate was able to speak
privately with his man again, for long after the servants had themselves
finished eating, the fine folk lingered at cards and brandy in the main
cabin. Their very merriment, of course—the sounds of which Ebenezer
heard clearly where he stood by the foremast, brooding on the moonlit
ocean—seemed to indicate that nothing was seriously amiss; nevertheless
his exasperation was tempered by relief when finally he saw Bertrand emerge
on the quarter-deck with Captain Meech himself, still laughing at some
private joke, and fire up his pipe at the smoking-lamp. The poet felt a
pang of envy: he was not pleased with the progress of events, especially
his servant's insolent assurance. Yet it was not Bertrand's manner alone
that disturbed him; the truth was, he found the man's cynical argument
as attractive as his own idealistic reply and was at bottom satisfied with
neither. For that reason, when he asked what had been said at supper con-
cerning the literary wager of the afternoon, he was, if saddened, not sur-
prised by the report.

" Twas the talk of the table, right enough, sir." Bertrand puffed and
frowned at his pipe. "The Robotham wench told what I'd said and how
ye'd glossed it, word for word. To speak plainly, sir, the Colonel, her
father, then asked me why I abided so brash a servant, if ye'll pardon me,
as presumes to speak fofs master. The rest took up the cry, and the young
piece said at last, one could know me for a poet by the look of me, and
yourself for a byo- . . . beo- . . . something or other."

"Boeotian" the Laureate said glumly.

"Aye. Twas another of her smutty words.7'

Ebenezer then inquired, not enthusiastically, what answer his man had
made.

"What could I say, to end their gossip? I told 7em flat that naught matters
in a secretary save his penmanship. The Captain then summoned up old
strumpet Fortune again, that seems their favorite bawd: he knew the pas-
sage through, he said, but had forgot just when 'twas spoke in some play
or other he named."

"Ah." Ebenezer closed his eyes almost hopefully. "Then 'tis over and
done with us, after all."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [239]

"How's that, sir? I didn't bat an eyelash, thankee, but declared 'twas
spoke on shipboard an hour past noon, when the poet lost his last quid
on a short day's run." He pulled again on his pipe and spat with satisfaction
at the rolling ocean. "No more was said oft after that."

13: THE LAUREATE, AWASH IN A SEA OF DIFFICULTIES,
RESOLVES TO BE LAUREATE, NOT BEFORE INDITING
FINAL SEA-COUPLETS

AFTER THE FOREGOING CONVERSATIONS WITH BERTRAND, EBENEZER'S

dissatisfaction with his position was no longer confined to mealtimes; rather,
he took to a general brooding and spiritual malaise. He could write no
verse: even the sight of a school of great whales, which in happier times
would have set his fancy spinning, now called forth not a single rhyme.
At best he had got on indifferently with his messmates; now they sensed
his distaste, and resentment added malice to the jokes they made at his
expense. When, therefore, after perhaps a week of this solitary discontent,
Bertrand confided to him with a happy leer that Lucy Robotham was about
to become the Maryland Laureate's mistress, his reaction to the news was
anything but hospitable.

"You lay a finger on her/' he threatened, "and you'll finish your crossing
in leg irons."

"Ah, well, 'tis a little late for that advice, sir; the quail is bagged and
plucked, and wants but basting on the spit."

"No, I sayl" Ebenezer insisted, as much impatient as appalled. "Why
must I say it twice? Your gambling runs counter to my better judgment,
but fornication— 'tis counter to my very essence!"

Bertrand was altogether unruffled by his master's ire. "Not in the least,"
he said. "A poet without a mistress is a judge without a wig: 'tis the
badge of his office, and the Laureate should keep a staff of 'em. My sole
concern is to play the poet well, sir."

Ebenezer remained unpersuaded. " 'Tis an overnice concern that makes
a whore of the Colonel's daughter!"

Here Bertrand protested that in fact his interest in Lucy Robotham was
largely dispassionate: Colonel Robotham, he had learned, was one of
the original conspirators with John Coode who had overthrown Lord

[ 240 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Baltimore's government in 1689, and, for all he was sailing presently under
Governor Nicholson's protection, he might well be still in secret league
with the insurrectionists. " Twould not surprise me/' 'he declared, "if old
Robotham's using the girl for bait. Why else would he watch us carry on
so without a word? Aye, by Heav'n, I'll hoist him with his own petard!"

In the face of this new information and his valet's apparent talent for
intrigue, Ebenezer's resolve began to weaken: his indignation changed to
petulance. "You've a Sophist's gift for painting vice in virtue's color," he
said. " Tis clear thou'rt out to make the most of my name and office."

"Then I have your leave, sir?"

"I wonder you even trouble to ask it these days."

"Ah, thankee, sir!" Bertrand's voice showed obvious relief. "Thou'rt a
gentleman to the marrow and have twice the understanding of any wight
on the boat! I knew ye for a fine soul the first I e'er laid eyes on you, when
Master Andrew sent me to look to your welfare in London. In every
thing "

"Enough; you sicken me," the poet said. "What is't thou'rt after now,
for God's sake? I know this flattery will cost me dear."

"Patience, I pray ye, sir," Bertrand pleaded in a tone quite other than
that of his earlier conversations; he was for the nonce entirely the valet
again. After reaffirming at length his faith in Ebenezer's understanding
and their mutual interest in preserving their disguise, and asserting as well
that they were of one mind as regarded the importance of gentlemanly
wagering to that disguise, he confessed that he needed additional subsidiz-
ing to maintain appearances, and this at once.

"Dear God!" the Laureate cried. "You've not lost twenty pounds so
soon!"

Bertrand nodded confirmation and explained that he'd wagered heavily
in side bets on the past day's run in order to recoup his former losses, but
that despite his most careful calculations he'd lost by a paltry mile or so
to Miss Robotham, who he suspected had access to private information
from the Captain. " 'Tis but another case of influence over merit," he con-
cluded with a philosophic sigh.

"Half my savings! And you've gall enough to ask for the rest to throw
after it!"

"Far from it, sir," Bertrand declared. "On the contrary, I mean not only
to win your money and mine again, but to pay it back fivefold. 'Tis for
this as much as anything I need the Robotham wench/' The Poseidon,
he said, was near the end of her second week of southwestering, and the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 241 ]

wise money placed the Azores only two or three days distant. So likely was
this landfall, in fact, that the bet-covering parson Mr. Tubman demanded a
pound for every shilling on those two dates, whereas any date before or
afterwards fetched most lucrative odds. Bertrand's plan, then, was to
make such a conquest of Miss Robotham that she would turn to his ac-
count all her influence with Captain Meech: if his private estimate of the
date of landfall was other than the prevailing opinion, Bertrand would
place all his money on and around the new date; if the Captain's guess
concurred with that of the passengers, Miss Robotham would employ every
art and wile to induce him to sail more slowly and raise the islands on
some later date. Either way, he assured Ebenezer, the prospect of enrich-
ing themselves was so certain that it could scarce be called a wager at all.

"Marry, you give me little choice!" Ebenezer said bitterly when his man
had finished. "First you make it seem not foolish to take the girl, then you
make it downright prudent, and now you make it necessary, albeit you
know as well as I at bottom 'tis naught but prurience and luxury. Take
the wench, and my money as well! Make me a name for a gambling
whoremonger and have done with't!"

Having thus given vent to his feelings, he fetched out his last twenty
pounds from the trunk and with great misgivings tendered the sum to
Bertrand, appealing a final time to the man's discretion. The servant
thanked him as one gentleman might thank another for a trifling loan and
went to setk out Lucy Robotham.

Following this transaction the poet's melancholia grew almost feverish.
All day he languished in his berth or slouched ungracefully at the rail to
stare at the ocean; Bertrand's announcement, delivered next morning with
a roll of the eyes, that the seduction of Miss Robotham was an accom-
plished fact, elicited only a sigh and a shake of his master's head; and
when in an attempt at cheerfulness the valet subsequently declared him-
self ready to have his way with strumpet Fortune, the Laureate's listless
reply was "Who trafficks with strumpets hath a taste for the pox/'

He was, as he himself recognized without emotion, very near a state
like that from which he'd been saved once by Burlingame and again, un-
intentionally, by John McEvoy. What saved him this time was an event
actually in keeping with his mood: on the first of the two "wise money"
days the fleet encountered its first really severe weather. The wind swung
round from north to southwest, increased its velocity, and brought with it
a settled storm of five days' duration. The Poseidon pitched, yawed, and
rolled in the heavy seas; passengers were confined below decks most of the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

day. The smell of agitated bilge water permeated the cabins, and even
the sailors grew seasick. Ebenezer fell so ill that for days he could scarcely
eat at the servants' mess; he left his berth only when nature summoned
him either to the ship's rail or to the chamberpot. Yet, though he voiced
his misery along with the others, he had not, like them, any fervent wish
for calm: to precipitate a cataclysm is one thing, and requires resolution
at the least; but to surrender to and embrace an already existing cataclysm
wants no more than despair.

He did not see Bertrand again until late in the fifth and final day of
the storm, which was also the most severe. All through the lightless day
the Posiedon had shuddered along under reefed topsails, the wind having
shifted to the northeast, and at evening the gale increased. Ebenezer was
on the quarter-deck, in his innocence heaving over the windward rail and
in his illness oblivious to the unsavory results. Here he was joined by his
valet, as usual dressed in his master's clothes, who had come on deck for
the same purpose and who set about the work with similar untidiness. For
awhile they labored elbow to elbow in the growing dark; presently Ebenezer
managed to ask, "What odds doth the Reverend Tubman give on living
through this night? I'd make no bets on't."

At this Bertrand fell to a perfect fit of retching. "Better for all if the
bloody boat goes under!" he replied at last. " Tis not a fart to me if I
live, or die."

"Is this the Laureate I hear?" Ebenezer regarded his man's irifsery with
satisfaction.

"Don't speak the word!7' Bertrand moaned and buried his face in his
hands. "God curse the day I e'er left London!"

At every new complaint, Ebenezer's stomach grew easier. "But how is
this?" he asked sarcastically. "You'd rather be a gelded servingman in Lon-
don than a gentleman poet with a mistress and a fortune? I cannot fathom
it!"

"Would God Ralph Birdsall had untooled me!" Bertrand cried. "Man's
cod's a wretched handle that woman leads him 'round with. Oh, the whore!
The treacherous,, lying whore!"

Now the poet's satisfaction turned to real delight. "Aha, so the cock
must 4crow Cuckoo! By Heav'n, the wench doth well to horn you, that
make such sport of horning'others!"

"Nay, God, ye must not praise the slut!"

"Not praise her? She hath my praise and my endorsement; she hath my
blessing "

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 243 ]

"She hath your money too," said Bertrand, "all forty pound of it." And
seeing his master too thunderstruck to speak, he told the tale of his decep-
tion. The Robotham girl, he said, had sworn her love for him, and on the
strength of it had six days ago, by her own tearful account, mortgaged her
honor to the extent of permitting Captain Meech certain liberties with her
person, in return wherefor she was able to advise Bertrand to put his money
on a date several days later than the favored ones: she had it straight from
the Captain that, though Flores was indeed but one day off, a storm was
brewing on the south horizon that could set them back a hundred miles
with ease. At the same time she cautioned him not to disclose his wager
but to give out that he too was betting on the popular dates; she would
see to it, she vowed, that the bookmaking minister held his tongue— True
love recks not the cost! Finally, should the Poseidon not raise Flores on
the proper day, she had a maid with whom the lookout on the larboard
watch had fallen quite in love and for whose favors he would swear to
raising the jasper coasts of Heaven.

Thus assured, Bertrand had put his money at fifteen to one on the day
to follow this present day— but alas, as he saw too clearly now, the wench
had worked a manifold deception! Her real lover, it appeared, was no other
soul than the Reverend Tubman himself, for the sake of whose solvency
she had led every poor fool in the group to think her his secret mistress
and bet on the selfsame date. Then when the storm arrived on schedule,
how they all had cursed and bemoaned their losses, each laughing up his
sleeve at his advantage over the rest! But now, on the eve of their
triumph; on this very day of our Lord which might well be their last; in
short, one hour ago, the larboard lookout had sworn to sighting the moun-
tains of Corvo from his perch in the maintop, and though no other eye
save his had seen them, Captain Meech had made the landfall official.

As though to confirm the valet's story, Captain Meech just then ap-
peared on the poop and ordered the ship hove to under reefed fore-topsail
—a measure that the gale alone made prudent, whether Corvo lay to lee-
ward or not. Indeed, the mate's command to strike the main and mizzen
topsails was behindhand, for while the men were still in the ratlines
a gust split all three sails and sprang the mizzenmast as well. The foresail
itself was raised instead, double-reefed, to keep the ship from broaching
to until a new fore-topsail could be bent to its yard; then the crew hurried
to clear the wildly flapping remnants of the mizzen topsail— and none
too soon, for at the next strong gust on the weakened spar a mizzen shroud
parted with the crack of a pistol shot.

[244] THE SOT-WEED FACTO&

It was at this least fortunate of moments that Ebenezer, sickened anew
by the tidings of his ruin, leaned out again over the rail: the fiddle-tight
shroud lashed back and smacked him on the transom, and he was horrified
to find himself, for an instant, actually in the sea beside the ship! No
one saw him go by the board; -the officers and crew had their hands full,
and Bertrand, unable to look his master in the eye during the confession,
still cowered at the rail with his face in his arms. He could not shout for
coughing up sea-water, but nothing could have been done to save him
even in the unlikely event that anyone heard his cries. In short, it would
have been all over with him then and there had not the same wind that
formerly returned his heavings to him now blown the top off the next
great wave: crest, spray, and senseless poet tumbled back aboard, along
with numerous tons of green Atlantic Ocean, and for better or worse the
Laureate was safe.

However, he did not regain his consciousness at once. For what could
to him have been as well an hour or a year he languished in a species of
euphoria, oblivious to his surroundings and to the passage of time, even
to the fact that he was safe. It was a dizzy, dreamlike state, for the most
part by no means unpleasant, though interrupted now and then by short
periods of uncertain straggling accompanied by vague pain. Sometimes he
dreatned— not nightmares at all but oddly tranquil visions. Two recurred
with soine frequency: the first and most mysterious was of twin alabaster
mountain cones, tall and smoothly polished; old men were seated on the
peaks, and around the bases surged a monstrous activity the nature of which
he could not make out. The other was a recapitulation of his accident,
in a strangely altered version: he was in the water beside the Poseidon,
but the day was gloriously bright instead of stormy; the tepid sea was green,
glass calm, and not even wet; the ship, though every sail was full, moved
not an inch away; not Bertrand, but his sister Anna and his friend Henry
Burlingame watched him from the quarter-deck, smiling and waving, and
instead of terror it was ecstasy that filled the poet's breast!

When at length he came fully to his senses, the substance of these dreams
defied recall, but their tranquility came with him to the waking world. He
lay peacefully for a long time with his eyes open, admitting reality a fact
at a time into his consciousness. To begin with, he was alive— a certain
dizziness, some weakness of the stomach, and sharp pains in his buttocks
vouched for that, though he felt them with as much detachment as if
the ailing members were not his. He remembered the accident without

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 245 ]

alarm, but knew neither how it had occurred nor what had saved him.
Even the memory that Bertrand had lost all his money, which followed
immediately after, failed to ruffle his serenity. Gradually he understood
that he was lying in a hammock in the fo'c'sle: he knew the look of the
place from his earlier confinement there. The room was shadowy and full
of the smells of lamp-oil and tobacco-smoke; he heard occasional short
laughs and muttered curses, and the slap of playing-cards; somewhere near
at hand a sleeper snored. It was night, then. Last of all he realized that
the ship was riding steady as a church, at just the slightest angle of heel:
the storm had passed, and also the dangerous period of high seas and no
wind that often follows storms at sea; the Poseidon was making gentle way.

Though he was loath to leave that pleasant country where his spirit had
lately traveled, he presently swung his legs out of the hammock and sat
up. In other hammocks all around him men were sleeping, and four sailors
played at cards on a table near the center of the room.

"Marry!" one of them cried. "There stirs our sleeping beauty!" The rest
turned round with various smiles to look.

"Good evening/' Ebenezer said. His voice was weak, and when he stood
erect his legs gave way, and the sharp pain in his buttocks recommenced.
He grasped a bulkhead for support.

"What is't, lad?" a smiling jack inquired. "Got a gimp?"

At this the party laughed aloud, and though the point of the joke es-
caped him, Ebenezer smiled as well: the strange serenity he'd waked with
made it of no importance that their laughter was doubtless at his expense.

"Belike I took a fall," he said politely. "I hurt a little here and there."

" Twere a nine-day wonder if ye didn't!" an old fellow cackled, and
Ebenezer recognized that same Ned who'd first delivered him into Ber-
trand's presence and had pinched him so cruelly into the bargain. The
others laughed again, but bade their shipmate be silent.

A third sailor, somewhat less uncouth appearing than the rest, made
haste to say, "What Ned means is, small wonder ye've an ache or two
where the mizzen shroud struck ye." He indicated a small flask near at
hand. "Come have a dram to steady yourself while the mate's on deck."

"I thank you," Ebenezer said, and when he had done shivering from
the rum he mildly asked, "How is't I'm here?"

"We found ye senseless on the main deck in the storm/' the sailor said.
"Ye'd near washed through the scuppers."

"Chips yonder used your berth for planking," old Ned added gleefully,

[ 246 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and indicated the sailor who had spoken first—a lean, sandy fellow in his
forties.

"No offense intended, mind," said the carpenter, playing another card.
"We was taking water aft, and all my planks was washed by the board.
I asked in the 'tween decks which berth to use, and yours was the one they
showed me/'

"Ah well, Fll not miss their company, I think." On further questioning
Ebenezer learned that his unconsciousness had lasted three days and
nights, during which time he'd had no food at all. He was ravenously hun-
gry; the cook, rather expecting him to die, had left no rations for him,
but the crewmen readily shared their bread and cheese. They showed con-
siderable curiosity about his three-day coma: in particular, had he felt not
anything at all? His assurance that he had not seemed greatly to amuse them.

"Out on't, then!" the carpenter declared. "Tis over and done with,
mate, and if aught's amiss, bear in mind we thought ye a dying man."

"Amiss?" Ebenezer did not understand. By this time the rum had
warmed his every member, and the edge was off his hunger. In the lantern
light the fo'c'sle looked quite cozy. He had not lately met with such hos-
pitality as had been shown him by these uncouth sailors, who doubtless
knew not even his pseudonym, to say nothing of his real identity. "If aught's
amiss," he asserted warmly, " 'tis that in my muddled state I've made no
proper thanks for all your kindness. Would God I'd pence to pay you for't,
though I know 'twas natural goodness moved you and not the landsman's
grubby wish for gold. But I'm a pauper."

"Think never a fart oft," one of the men replied. "'Tis your master's
lookout. Drink up, now."

The Laureate smiled at their innocence and took another drink. Should
he tell them who in fact they were so kind to? No, he decided affectionately;
let virtue be its own reward. He called to mind tales of kings in humble
dress, going forth among their subjects; of Christ himself, who sometimes
traveled incognito. Doubtless they would one day learn the truth, from
some poem or other that he'd write: then the adventure would become
a legend of the fo'c'sles and a telling anecdote in biographies to come.

The sailors' cordial attitude prevailed through the following fortnight,
as did the poet's remarkable tranquility. This latter, at least, he came in-
creasingly to understand: the second of his euphoric visions had come
back to him, and he saw in it, with a quiet thrill, a mystic affirmation of
his calling, such as those once vouchsafed to the saints. What was this
ship, after all, but the Ship of Destiriy, from which in retribution for his

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 247 ]

doubts he had been cast? What was the ocean but a Font of Rededication,
a moral bath to cleanse him of despair and restore him to the Ship? The
message was unequivocal even without the additional, almost frightening
miracle that he had unwittingly predicted it! Hence Burlingame's presence
on the dream ship, for he it was, in the King o' the Seas (that is to say,
Poseidonl) who had scoffed at the third line of Ebenezefs quatrain

"Let Ocean roar his damn'dest Gde:
Our Planks shan't leak; our Masts shan't fail;
With great Poseidon by our Side
He seemeth neither wild nor wide.

—which, he claimed, placed the poet in the ocean. Ebenezer thought warmly
of his friend and teacher, who for all he knew might long since have been
found out by Slye and Scurry and sent to a watery grave. Henry had been
skeptical of the laureateship, no doubt about it
"Would God I had him here, to tell this wonder to!"
Since the momentous sighting of Corvo in the Azores, the Poseidon
had been sailing a due westerly course along the thirty-seventh parallel of
latitude, which if all went well would lead her straight to the Virginia Capes.
The lengthy storm had scattered the fleet to the four winds, so that not
another sail was visible on the horizon; but Captain Meech looked to
overhaul the flagship any day^, which he reckoned to be ahead of them.
Although some time had been lost in making repairs, when Chips com-
pleted a masterful scarfing of the damaged spar the Poseidon bowled along
for days on end in a whole-sail breeze. They were five weeks out of Plym-
outh; May was upon them, and landfall again on everybody's lips.

During this period Ebenezer seldom left the foVsle: for one thing, it
took him a while to regain his strength; for another, he had no desire to
see his former messmates again, and anyway his musings kept him pleasantly
occupied. Bertrand, of course, he could not avoid some contact with, but
their meetings were brief and uncommunicative— the valet was uncertain
of his position, and Ebenezer, besides enjoying the man's discomfort, had
nothing to say to him. Though he could entertain no more illusions about
the ship's magnificence, his admiration for the sailors had increased tenfold.
His despair was gone completely: with tranquil joy he watched the dolphins
roll along the freeboard and in the wake and, caught up in the general
anticipation, he sharpened his quills, got out the volumes of Milton and
Samuel Butler that he used as references, and hatched the following cou-
plets to describe the great event that lay ahead: his first glimpse of Mary-
land.

[248] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Belike Ulysses, wncTring West

From Ilions Sack, in Tatters drest,

And weary' d of his ten-year Roam

O'er wat'ry Wilds of desart Foam.

Beholding Ithaca at last

And seeing all his Hardship past,

Did swear 'twas Heav'ns own Shore he'd rais'd,

So lovely seem'd it as he gaz'd,

Despite its Rocks and Fearsome Coast.

How Heav'nlier, then, this Land I boast,

Whose golden Sands and verdant Trees

And Harbours snug, designed to ease

The Sailors Burthen, greet the Eye

With naught save Loveliness! Nay, try

As best it might, no Poets Song,

Be't e'er so sweet or ne'er so long,

Could tell the Whole of MARYLANDS Charms,

When from the Oceans boundless Harms

The Travrler comes unscath'd at last,

And from his Vessels loftiest mast

He first beholds her Beautyl

To which, at the foot of the ledger-sheet, he duly appended E.G., G^*,
Pt & V of Md, and regarded the whole with a satisfaction such as he
had not felt since the night of Joan Toast's fateful visit, when he had com-
posed his hymn to virginity; in particular he was pleased by the several
enjambed lines and the sentences ending in the middle of a couplet or
even in the middle of a line, which features he thought lent a commendable
tightness of structure to the entire poem, and by the lengthy periods them-
selves, whose syntactical arrangement precluded the sort of line-at-a-time
composition characteristic of amateurs. He was impatient to have done
with disguises and assume his true position in the Province; his physical
condition was better than it had been before the accident, and his spirits
could scarcely have been improved upon. After considering the merits of
several plans, he resolved at length to end the fraud by announcing his
identity and reciting these latest verses as soon as the Poseidon made a land-
fall: clearly there was no plot against the Laureate aboard ship, and the
passengers deserved to know the truth about him and Bertrand

It was not his fortune, however, to carry out this pleasant scheme. With
their journey's end so near at hand, passengers and crew alike grew daily
more festive, and though the sailors were officially forbidden to drink aboard
ship, the fo'c'sle no less than the main cabin became the scene of nightly
revels. The crew's hospitality to Ebenezer waxed proportionately: he had

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 249 1

no money to invest in their card-games, but he readily shared their rum
and cordiality.

One evening when all had drunk a fair amount of liquor, old Ned, whose
amiable deportment had most surprised the Laureate, descended the com-
panionway and announced to the company at large that he had just re-
turned from an interview with Mister Ebenezer Cooke on the main deck.
Ebenezer's ears pricked up and his cheeks burned, for the man's tone im-
plied that he had been sent as some kind of spokesman for the group. The
rest avoided looking at him.

"I told 'Squire Cooke how fairly we'd looked to's man," Ned continued,
smiling unpleasantly at the poet. "I told him we'd fetched him from death's
door and nursed him back to health again, and shared our bed and board
without complaint. Then I asked him if't wouldn't please him to give
us somewhat for our pains, seeing we're coming on to landfall "

"What did he say?" a man asked. Ebenezer's features boiled about: he
was disappointed to learn that their generosity had been at least partly
venal, but at the same time he recognized his obligation to them and the
legitimacy of their claim.

Ned leered at him. 'The lying wretch pled povertyl Says he lost his last
farthing when we sighted Corvoi"

" Tis all too true," Ebenezer declared, in the face of a general protest
at Ned's announcement. "He is a profligate fellow and, not content to
squander his own money hath wagered mine as well, which is why I could
not join your games. But I swear you shall be paid for your kindness, since
you set a price on't. Do but copy down your names for me, and I'll dis-
patch the sum the day I arrive at Maiden."

'Til wager ye will, and lose my money tool" Chips laughed. "A vow
like that is lightly sworn!"

"Prithee let me explain " Ebenezer made up his mind to reveal his

identity then and there.

"No explanation needed," said the boatswain, who in most matters spoke
for the crewmen on that watch. "When sailors nurse an ailing sailor they
want no thanks, but when they share the fo'c'sle with an ailing passenger,
they're paid at the voyage's end."

" 'Tis the code o' the sea," Ned affirmed.

"And a fair one," Ebenezer granted. "If you'll but "

"Stay," the boatswain commanded with a smile, and brought forth a
sheet of paper from his pocket. "Your master pleads poverty, and you as
well. There's naught for't but ye must sign this paper."

[ 250 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Ebenezer took the document doubtfully and read the rudely penned
words.

"What thing is this?" he cried, and looked up to find all the sailors grin-
ning at his wonder.

" Tis the code o' the sea, as Ned says/' the boatswain answered. "Sign
ye that paper and thou'rt a poor jack like the rest of us, that owes his
fellows not a fart."

Indeed, the document proclaimed that its signer was a kind of honorary
member of the Poseidon's crew and shared the rights, privileges, and obli-
gations of a common seaman, work and pay excepted. Its language, polished
by comparison with the penmanship, suggested that the gesture was in
fact a traditional means of coping with what Ebenezer had assumed to
be a novel predicament, and Captain Meech's signature in one corner be-
spoke official sanction.

"Then— you want no payment after all?"

The boatswain shook his head. " 'Twould be against the code to think
oft from a shipmate/'

"Why, 'tis an honor!" the poet laughed, his esteem for the men re-
doubled. "I'll sign my name right gladly!" And fetching out his quill he
fixed his proper name and title to the paper.

"Ah, mate," said Chips, who watched behind his shoulder, "what prank
is this ye play us for our kindness? Sign thy own name, not thy master's!"

"Is't you* ve heard before about the code?" Ned asked suspiciously.

"Nay, gentlemen, I mean no prank. 'Tis time you knew the truth." He
proceeded then to tell the whole story of his disguise, explaining as briefly
as he could what made it necessary. The liquor oiled his tongue: he spoke
eloquently and at length, and by way of credentials even recited from
memory every couplet in his notebook. "Do but say the word," he con-
cluded. "I'll fetch my valet hence to swear to't. He could not quote a verse
from memory and scarce could read 'em off the page."

At first openly incredulous, the men were clearly impressed by the time
the poet was finished. No one suggested summoning Bertrand to testify.
Their chief reservation, it turned out, was the fact that Ebenezer had
been content with a fo'c'sle hammock while his servant enjoyed the favors
of Miss Lucy Robotham, and the Laureate turned this quickly to account
by reminding them of his hymn to virginity: such behavior as Bertrand's
was unthinkable in .a man to whom virginity was of the essence.

" 'Sbody!" the boatswain cried. "Ye mean to say a poet is like a popish
priest, that uses his cod for naught but a bilge-pump?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 2J1 ]

"I speak for no poet save myself/7 Ebenezer replied, and went on to
explain, insofar as modesty permitted, the distinction between ecclesiastical
celibacy and true virginity. The former, he declared, was no more than a
discipline, albeit a highly commendable one in that it turned to nobler
work the time and energy commonly spent on love-making, spared the
votary from dissipating entanglements with mistresses and wives, and was
conducive in general to a longer and more productive life; but it was by
no means so pure a state as actual virginity, and in point of fact implied
no necessary virtue at all—the greatest lecher is celibate in later years, when
his powers have fled. Celibacy, in short, was a negative practice almost
always adopted either by default or by external authority; virginity, on the
other hand, was a positive metaphysical state, the more to be admired since
it was self-imposed and had in itself neither instrumental value nor, in the
male, physical manifestation of its possession or loss. For him it had not
even the posthumous instrumentality of a Christian virtue, since his in-
terest in it was ontological and aesthetic rather than moral. He expatiated
freely, more for his own edification than that of the crew, who regarded
him with awe.

"Ye mean to sit there and tell us/' the boatswain asked soberly in the
middle of a sentence, "ye never caulked a fantail in your life? Ye never
turned the old fid to part some dock-whore's hemp?"

"Nor shall I ever/' the poet said stoutly, and to forestall further prykig
he returned the proclamation and proposed a drink to his new position.
"Think not I count your honor less as Laureate," he assured them. "Let's
have a dram on't, and ere the night's done I'll pay my toll with something
more sweet than silver." Indeed, he meant to do them no less an honor
than to sing their praises for ever and all in verse.

The sailors looked at each other.

"So be't!" old Ned cackled, and the others voiced approval too. "Get
some rum in him, mates, 'fore the next watch!"

Ebenezer was given the bottle and bade to drink it all himself. "What's
this?" He laughed uncertainly. "A sort of initiation ceremony?"

"Nay, that comes after," said Chips. "The rum's to make ye ready."

Ebenezer declined the preliminaries with a show of readiness for any
mock ordeal. "Let's put by the parsley and have at the meat, then; you'll
find me game for'tl"

This was the signal for a general uproar: the poet's arms were pinioned
from both sides; his chair was snatched from under him by one sailor,
and before he could recover from his surprise another pressed his face into

[ 252 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

a pillow that lay in the center of the table, having magically appeared from
nowhere. Not given by temperament to horseplay, Ebenezer squirmed with
embarrassment; furthermore, both by reason of his office and from sim-
ple fear of pain he did not relish the idea of ritual bastinados on his back-
side, the administering of which he assumed to be the sailors' object.

When to his horror it grew clear, a moment later, that birching was not
their intent at all, no force on earth could keep him silent; though his
head was held as fast as were his limbs, he gave a shriek that even the
main-top lookout heard.

"Captain Meech will hang you for this!" he cried, when he could muster
words.

"Ye think he knows naught o' the code o' the sea?" Ebenezer recognized
old Ned's evil cackle behind him. "Ye saw his name on the paper, did ye
not?"

And as if to confirm the hopelessness of his position, no sooner had he
recommenced his shrieks than the mate on deck thrust his head down the
companionway to issue a cheerful ultimatum: "The Captain says belay the
hollowing or lay the wretch out with a pistol-butt. He's bothering the ladies."

His only threat thus spiked, Ebenezer seemed condemned to suffer the
initiation in its ruinous entirety. But a sudden cry went up on deck— Eb-
enezer, half a-swoon, paid no attention to it— and in an instant every man
ran for the companionway, leaving the novice to his own resorts. Weak with
outrage, he sent a curse after them. Then he made shift to dress himself and
tried as best he could to calm his nerves with thoughts of retribution. Still
oblivious to the sound of shouts and running feet above his head, he pres-
ently gave voice to a final sea-couplet, the last verse he was to spawn for
weeks to come:

"Hell hath no fouler, filthier Demon:
Preserve me, LORD, from English Seamen!"

Now to the general uproar on deck was added the sound of musket fire
and even the great report of a cannon, though the Poseidon carried no
artillery: whatever was happening could no longer be ignored. Ebenezer
went to the companionway, but before he could climb up he was
met by Bertrand, in nightgown and cap, who leaped below in a single
bound and fell sprawling on the floor.

"Master Ebenezer!" he cried and, spying the poet by the ladderway,
rose trembling to his knees. At sight of the man's terror Ebenezer's flesh
tingled.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 253 ]

"What is't, man? What ails you?"

"We're all dead men, sir!" Bertrand wailed. " Tis all up with us! Pirates,
sir! Ah, curse the hour I played at Laureate! The devils are boarding us
this moment!"

"Nay! Thou'rt drunk!"

"I swear't, sir! Tis the plank for all of us!" In the late afternoon, he
explained, the Poseidon had raised another sail to the southeast, which,
taking it for some member of the fleet, Captain Meech made haste to
overhaul before dark— the man-o'-war that was to see them safely through
pirate waters had been out of sight since Corvo, and two ships together
were more formidable prey than one alone. But it had taken until just
awhile ago to overtake the stranger, and no sooner were they in range
than a shot was fired across their bow, and they realized too late that they
were trapped. "Would Heav'n I'd stayed to face Ralph Birdsall!" he la-
mented in conclusion. "Better my cod lost than my whole life! What shall
we do?"

The Laureate had no better answer for this than did his valet, who still
crouched trembling on his knees» unable to stand. The shooting had
stopped, but there was even more shouting than before, and Ebenezer
felt the shock of another hull brushing the Poseidon's. He climbed a little
way up the ladder— just enough to peer out

He saw a chilling sight. The other vessel rode along the Poseidon's star-
board beam, made fast to her victim with numerous grappling hooks. It
was a shallop, schooner-rigged and smaller than the Poseidon, but owing
to its proximity and the long weeks during which nothing had been to
be seen but open sea on every hand, it looked enormous. Men with pistols
or torches in one hand and cutlasses in the other, presumably pirates, were
scrambling over the railings unopposed, the firelight rendering them all
the more fearsome, and were herding the Poseidon's crew around the main-
mast; it appeared that Captain Meech had deemed it unwise to resist. The
Captain himself, together with his fellow officers, could be seen under
separate guard farther aft, by the mizzen, and already the passengers were
being rousted out from their berths onto the deck, most in nightclothes
or underwear. The men cursed and complained; the women swooned,
shrieked, or merely wept in anticipation of their fate. Over the pirates' fore-
mast hung the gibbous moon, its light reflecting whitely from the fluttering
gaff-topsails; the lower sails, also luffing in the cool night breeze, glowed
orange in the torchlight and danced with giant, flickering shadows. Eben-
ezer leaned full against the ladder to keep from falling. To his mind

[ 254 1 THE SOT-W1™ FACTOR

rushed all the horrors he'd read about in Esquemeling: how Roche
Brasiliano had used to roast his prisoners on wooden spits, or rub their
stripes with lemon juice and pepper; how L'Ollonais had pulled out his
victims' tongues with his bare hands and chewed their hearts; how Henry
Morgan would squeeze a man's eyeballs out with a tourniquet about the
skull, depend him by the thumbs and great toes, or haul him aloft by the
privy members.

From behind and below came the sound of Bertrand's lamentations,

"Now belay it, belay it!" one of the pirates was commanding, perhaps
an officer. It was not the passengers' miserable carcasses they had designs
on, he declared, but money and stores. If everyone behaved himself prop-
erly,, no harm would befall them save the loss of their valuables, a few
barrels of pork and peas, and three or four seamen, whom the pirates
needed to complement their crew; in an hour they could resume their voy-
age. He then dispatched a contingent of pirates to accompany the male
passengers back to their quarters and gather the loot, the women remaining
above as hostages to assure a clean picking; another detail he ordered to
pillage the hold; and a third, consisting of three armed men, came forward
to search the fo'c'sle for additional seamen.

"Quickly!" Ebenezer cried to Bertrand, jumping to the floor. "Put these
clothes on and give me my nightgown!" He commenced pulling the valet's
clothes off himself as hastily as possible.

"Why?" Bertrand wailed. " Tis all over with us either way."

Ebenezer had his clothes off already and began to yank at the night-
gown. "We know not what's in store for us," he said grimly. "Belike 'tis
the gentlemen they're after, not the poor folk. At any rate 'twere better
to see't through honestly: if I'm to die I'll die as Eben Cooke, not Bertrand
Burton! Off with this, now!" He gave a final tug, and the gown came off
over Bertrand's head and arms. "I'Christ, 'tis all beshit!"

"For very fear," the valet admitted, and scrabbled after some clothes.

"Avast there, laddies!" came a voice from the companionway. "Lookee
here, mates, 'tis a floating Gomorry!"

Ebenezer, the foul nightdress half over his head, and Bertrand, still
naked on all fours, turned to face three grinning pirates, pistols and swords
in hand, on the ladder.

"I do despise to spoil your party, sailors," said the leader. He was a fero-
cious-looking Moor, bull-necked, broken-nosed, rough-bearded, and dark-
skinned; a red turbanlike cap sat on his head, and black hair bristled from
his open shirt. "But we want your arses on deck."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 255 ]

"Prithee don't mistake me, sir/' Ebenezer answered, pulling the skirts
of his nightdress down. He drew himself up as calmly as he could and
pointed with disdain to Bertrand. "This fellow here may speak for him-
self, but I am no sailor: my name is Ebenezer Cooke, and I am Poet
Laureate of His Majesty's Province of Maryland!"

14: THE LAUREATE IS EXPOSED TO TWO
ASSASSINATIONS OF CHARACTER, A PIRACY, A NEAR-
DEFLOWERING, A NEAR-MUTINY, A MURDER, AND AN
APPALLING COLLOQUY BETWEEN CAPTAINS OF THE
SEA, ALL WITHIN THE SPACE OF A FEW PAGES

UNIMPRESSED BY EBENEZER^S DECLARATION, THE HORRENDOUS MOOR AND

his two confederates hustled their prisoners up to the main deck, the Lau-
reate clad only in his unpleasant nightshirt and Bertrand in a pair of
breeches hastily donned. The uproar had by this time subsided to some ex-
tent; though the women and servants wepf and wailed on every hand, the
officers and crew stood sullenly in groups around the mizzen and foremasts,
respectively, and the gentlemen, who were returning one by one from the
main cabin under the guard of their plunderers, preserved a tight-lipped
silence. Thus far no physical harm had been offered either woman or man,
and the efficient looting of the Poseidon was nearly complete: all that re-
mained of the pirates' stated objectives, as overheard by Ebenezer, was ta
finish the transfer of provisions and impress three or four seamen into their
service.

For robbery Ebenezer cared little, his valet having picked him clean
already; it was the prospect of being impressed that terrified him, since he
and Bertrand had been captured in the fo'c'sle and neither was wearing
the clothes of a gentleman. His fears redoubled when their captors led
them toward the foremast.

"Nay, prithee, hear me!" he cried. "I am no seaman at all! My name
is Ebenezer Cooke, of Cooke's Point in Maryland! I'm the Laureate
Poet!"

The Poseidon s crew, despite the seriousness of their position, grinned
and elbowed one another at his approach.

"Thou'rt a laureate liar, Jack," growled one of the pirates, and flung

[256] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

him into the group. But the scene attracted notice, and a pirate officer,
who by age and appearance seemed to be the Captain, approached from
the waist.

"What is't, Boabdil?" The officer's voice was mild, and his dress, in con-
trast to the outlandishness of his men's, was modest, even gentlemanly;
on shore one would have taken him for an honest planter or shipowner
in his fifties, yet the great Moor was clearly alarmed by his approach, and
glowered at Ebenezer for having precipitated it,

"Naught in the world, Captain. We found these puppies buggered in
the fo'c'sle, and the long one there claims he's no sailor."

"Ask my man here!" Ebenezer pleaded, falling on his knees before the
Captain. "Ask those wretches yonder if I'm one of them! I swear to you
sir, I am a gentleman, the Laureate of Maryland by order of Lord Balti-
more!"

In response to the Captain's question Bertrand attested his master's iden-
tity and declared his own, and the boatswain volunteered additional con-
firmation; but old Ned, though no one had asked his opinion, spitefully
swore the opposite, and by way of evidence produced, to the poet's horror,
the document signed in the fo'c'sle, which proclaimed Ebenezer a member
of the crew.

" 'Twere better for all if ye signed them two aboard," he added. "They're
able enough seamen, but thieves and rogues to ship with! Don't let 'em
fool ye with their carrying-on!"

Seeing their old shipmate's purpose, some of the other men took up the
cry, hoping thereby to save themselves from being forced to join the pi-
rates. But the Captain, after examining Ned's document, flung it over
the side.

"I know those things," he scoffed. "Besides, 'twas signed by the Laureate
of Maryland." He appraised Ebenezer skeptically. "So thou'rt the famous
Eben Cooke?"

"I swear't, sir!" Ebenezer's heart pounded; he tingled with admiration
for the Captain's astuteness and with wonder that his own fame was al-
ready so widespread. But his troubles were not over, for although the pirate
seemed virtually persuaded, he ordered both men brought aft for identi-
fication by the passengers, whereupon he was perplexed to hear a third ver-
sion—neither of the men was a sailor, but it was the older, stouter one who
was Laureate, and the skinny wretch his amanuensis. Captain Meech
agreed, and added that this was not the servant's first presumption to his
master's office.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 257 ]

"Ah," the pirate captain said to Bertrand, "thou'rt hiding behind thy
servant's skirts, then! Yet how is't the crew maintain the contrary?"

By this time the looting of the Poseidon was complete, and everyone's
attention turned to the interrogation. Ebenezer despaired of explaining
the complicated story of his disguise.

"What matters it to you which is the liar?" Captain Meech inquired
from the quarter-deck, where he was being held at pistol-point. "Take
their money and begone with ye!"

To which the pirate answered, undisturbed, "'Tis not the Laureate's
money I want— he hath little enough of that, I'll wager." Ebenezer and
Bertrand both vouched for the truth of this conjecture. " 'Tis a good valet
I'm after, to attend me aboard ship; the Laureate can go to the Devil."
"Ye have found me Out," Bertrand said at once. "I'll own I am the
Laureate Eben Cooke."

"Wretch!" cried Ebenezer. "Confess thou'rt a lying scoundrel of a serv-
ant!"

"Nay, I'll tell the truth," the pirate said, watching both men carefully.
" Tis the servant can go hang for all o' me; I've orders to hold the Laureate
on my ship."

"There is your poet, sir." Bertrand pointed shamelessly to Ebenezer. "A
finer master no man ever served."

Ebenezer goggled. "Nay, nay, good masters!" he said at last. " 'Tis not
the first time I've presumed, as Captain Meech declared! This man here
is the Laureate, in truth!"

"Enough," the pirate commanded, and turned to the turbaned Moor.
"Clap 'em both in irons, and let's be off."

Thus amid murmurs from the people on the Poseidon the luckless pair
were transferred to the shallop, protesting mightily all the way, and having
confiscated every firearm and round of ammunition they could find aboard
their prey, the pirates gave the ladies a final pinch, clambered over the
rail, cast off the grapples, and headed for the open sea, soon putting
their outraged victims far behind. The kidnaped seamen— Chips, the boat-
swain, and a youngster from the starboard watch — were taken to the cap-
tain's quarters to sign papers, and the two prisoners . confined forward in
the rope- and sail-locker, which by addition of a barred door and leg irons
made fast to the massive oak knees had been turned into a lightless brig.
Sick with wrath at his valet's treachery though he was, and with appre-
hension for his fate, Ebenezer was also bewildered by the whole affair and
demanded to know the reason for their abduction; but to all such queries

[ 2rg ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

their jailer— that same black giant who had first laid hands on them— sim-
ply responded, "Captain Pound hath his reasons, mate," and would say
no more. It was not until the leg irons were fastened and the brute, in the
process of bolting the heavy door, repeated this answer for the fourth or
fifth time, that Ebenezer recognized the name.

"Captain Pound, did you say? Your captain's name is Pound?"

'Tom Pound it is," the pirate growled, and stayed for no further ques-
tions.

"Dear Heav'n!" the poet exclaimed. He and Bertrand were alone in
the tiny cell now, and in absolute darkness, the Moor having taken the
lamp with him.

"D'ye know the blackguard, sir? Is he a famous pirate? Ah Christ, that
I were back in Pudding Lane! I'd hold the wretched thing myself, and let
Ralph Birdsall do his worst!"

"Aye, I know of Thomas Pound." Ebenezer's astonishment at the coin-
cidence—if indeed it was one— temporarily gained the better of his wrath.
"He's the very pirate Burlingame once sailed with, off New England!"

"Master Burlingame a pirate!" Bertrand exclaimed. "At that, 'tis no sur-
prise to me "

"Hold thy lying tongue!" snapped Ebenezer. "Thou'rt a pretty knave
to criticize my friend, that would throw me to the sharks yourself for tup-
pence!"

"Nay, prithee, sir," the servant begged, "think not so hard of me. I'll
own I played ye false, but 'twas thy life or mine, no paltry tuppence."
What's more, he added, Ebenezer had done the same a moment later,
when the Captain revealed his true intention.

To this truth the Laureate had no rejoinder, and so for a time both men
were silent, each brooding on his separate misery. For beds they had two
piles of ragged sailcloth on the floor timbers, which, since their cell was
in the extreme bow of the shallop, were not horizontal but curved upwards
from keel and cutwater, so that they also formed the walls. The angle,
together with the pounding of waves against the bow, would have made
sleep impossible for Ebenezer, despite his great fatigue, even without the
additional discomforts of fear and excitement. His mind returned to Henry
Burlingame, who in search of information about his parentage had sailed
under the very brigand who now held them prisoner; perhaps aboard this
very ship.

"Would he were here now, to intercede for me!"

He considered revealing his friendship with Burlingame to Captain

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR I 259 ]

Pound, but rejected the idea. He had no idea what name Henry had sailed
under, for one thing, and his friend's manner of parting company with
his shipmates would scarcely raise the value, in the Captain's eyes, of an
acquaintanceship with him. Ebenezer recalled the story, told him in the
Plymouth coach, of Burlingame's adventure with the mother and daughter
whom he'd saved from rape, and who had rewarded him with, among
other things, the first real clue to his ancestry. How sorely did he miss
Henry Burlingame! He could not even remember with any precision
what his dear friend looked like; at best his mental picture was a composite
of the very different faces and voices of Burlingame before and after the
adventures in America. Bertrand's remark came to his mind again, and
brought with it disturbing memories of the valet's encounters with Henry:
their meeting in the London posthouse, never mentioned by his friend,
and their exchange of clothing in the stable of the King o' the Seas. Why
had Bertrand not been surprised to learn of Burlingame's piracy, which
had so astonished Ebenezer?

"Why did you speak so ill of Burlingame?" he asked aloud,, but in re-
ply heard only the sound of snoring from the other side of the great keel
timber between them.

"In such straits as ours the wretch can sleep!7' he exclaimed with a mix-
ture of wonder and exasperation, but had not the heart to wake him. And
eventually, though he had thought the thing impossible, he too succumbed
to sheer exhaustion and, in that unlikeliest of places, slept.

By morning the question had either gone from his mind or lost its
importance, for he said nothing of it to his servant. It appeared as the day
went on that their treatment at the hands of Captain Pound was not to
be altogether merciless: after a breakfast of bread, cheese, and water— not
punishment, but the whole crew's morning fare— they were released from
their leg irons, given some purloined clothing, and allowed to come on
deck, where they found themselves riding an empty expanse of ocean. The
Moor, who seemed to be first mate, set them to various simple chores
like oakum-picking and holystoning; only at night were they returned to
their miserable cell, and never after the first time were they subjected to
the leg irons. Captain Pound put his case plainly to them: he was per-
suaded that one or the other was the Laureate but put no faith in the
assertions of either, and meant therefore to hold both in custody. He would
say no more regarding the reason for their incarceration than that he was
following orders, nor of its probable term than that when so ordered he

[260] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

would release them. In the meantime they had only to look to their be-
havior, and no injury would be done them.

From all this Ebenezer could not but infer that his captor was in some
manner an agent of the archconspirator John Coode, at whose direction
he had lain in ambush for the Poseidon. The man would stop at nothing
to reach his mischievous ends! And how devilish clever, to let the pirates
take the blame! The prospects of death or torture no longer imminent, the
Laureate allowed himself boundless indignation at being kidnaped— which
mighty sentiment, however, he was sufficiently prudent to conceal from the
kidnapers—and at the same time could not but commend his foe's respect
for the power of the pen.

"Tis perfectly clear," he explained to Bertrand in a worldly tone.
"Milord Baltimore had more than the muse in mind when he commissioned
the Marylandiad. He knows what too few princes will admit: that a good
poet's worth two friends at court to make or break a cause, though of course
the man's too sensible of a poet's feelings to declare such a thing outright.
Why else did he send dear Henry to watch after me, d'you think? And
why should Coode waylay me, but that he knows my influence as well as
Baltimore? Ffaith, two formidable antagonists!"

If Bertrand was impressed, he was not a whit consoled. "God pox the
twain of 'em!"

"Say not so/' his master protested. " Tis all very well to keep an open
mind on trifles, but this is a plain case of justice against poltroonery, and
the man that shrugs compounds the felony."

"Haply so," Bertrand said with a shrug. "I know your Baltimore's a won-
drous Papist, but I doubt me he's a saint yet, for all that." When Ebenezer
objected, the valet went on to repeat a story he'd heard from Lucy
Robotham aboard the Poseidon, the substance of which was that Charles
Calvert was in the employ of Rome. "He hath struck a dev'lish bargain
with the Pope to join the Papists and the salvages against the Protestants
and butcher every soul of 'em! Then when he hath made a Romish fortress
out of Maryland, the Jesuits will swarm like maggots o'er the landscape,
and ere ye can say 'Our Father' the entire country belongs to Rome!"

"Pernicious drivel!" Ebenezer scoffed. "What cause hath Baltimore to
do such evil?"

"What cause! The Pope is sworn to beatify him if he Romanizes Mary-
land, and canonize him if he snatches the whole country! He'll make a
bloody saint of him!" It was to prevent exactly this castastrophe, Lucy
Robotham had declared, that her father and the rest had joined with Coode

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 261 ]

to overthrow the Papists in Maryland, coincidentally with the deposition
of King James, and to petition William and Mary to assume the government
of the Province. 'Tet old Coode was ill paid for's labors," Bertrand said,
"for no sooner was the house pulled down than the wreckers fell out
amongst themselves, and Baltimore contrived to get this fellow Nicholson
the post of Governor. He flies King William's colors, but all the world
knows he's a Papist at heart: when he fought with James at Hounslow
Heath, he said his mass with the rest, and 'twas an Irish Papist troop he
took to Boston."

"Dear Father!" Ebenezer cried. "What a sink of calumny this Robotham
strumpet was! Nicholson's as honest a man as I!"

"He is the Duke of Bolton's bastard," the valet went on stubbornly. "And
ere he took up with the Papists he was aide-de-camp to Colonel Kirke in
Africa. They do declare he had a draught of wine from the Colonel's arse
at Mequinez, to please the Emperor Muley Ishmael "

"Stop!"

"Some say 'twas May-wine and others Bristol sherry; Mistress Lucy her-
self held with the May-winers."

"I'll hear no more!" the poet threatened, but to his every protest
Bertrand made the same replies. "There's a lot goes on that your honest
wight dreams naught of," or "More history's made in the bedchamber than
in the throne room."

" 'Tis not a fart to me who's right or wrong," he said at last. "This Coode
hath ginned us either way, and we'll ne'er set foot on land."

"How is that?" the poet demanded. "I've fared no worse here than
aboard the Poseidon, and we're only to be held till farther notice."

"No doubt!" the servant said. "But if thou'rt such a cannon as Charles
Calvert thinks, is't likely Coode. will turn ye loose to blast him? 'Tis a
mystery to me we're still alive!"

Ebenezer could not but acknowledge the logic of this position, yet
neither could he be immediately terrified by it. Captain Pound was
unquestionably formidable, but he was not cruel: although in the incident
related by Burlingame he had apparently condoned rape,, he seemed to
draw the line at murder, and his plundering of the Poseidon had been
almost gentlemanly. Moreover he was not even avaricious, as pirates go: for
weeks on end the shallop cruised with apparent aimkssness from north to
south and back again, flying English colors; when a sail appeared on the
horizon the pirates gave chase, but upon overhauling the other ship they
would salute it amiably, and Captain Pound would inquire, as might the

L202J THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

captain of any vessel met at sea, what port the stranger was bound for, and
with what cargo. And though the replies were sometimes provocative—
"Bark Adelaide, a hundred and thirty days out of Falmouth, for Philadelphia
with silk and silverware," or "Brig Pilgrim out of Jamaica with rum for
Boston"— only twice during the three full months of his imprisonment did
Ebenezer witness acts of piracy, and these occurred consecutively on the
same early August day, in the following manner:

For several days the shallop had ridden hove to, though the weather was
fine and nothing could be seen on any quarter. Just after the midday meal
on the day referred to the lookout spied a sail to westward, and after ob-
serving it for some time through his glass, Captain Pound said, " "Tis the
Poseidon, all right. Take 'em below." The three kidnaped sailors were
ordered to their quarters in the fo'c'sle, Bertrand was confined to the sail-
locker, and Ebenezer, who had labored all morning at the apparently point-
less job of shifting cargo in the hold, was sent below to complete the task.

"Poor Captain Meech!" he thought. "This devil hath lain in wait to ruin
him!" Though he deplored the idea of piracy in general and wished neither
Meech nor his passengers harm, he could not feel pity for the sailors who
had done him such an outrage; having witnessed already the ferocity of
the pirates, he rather relished the idea of a fight between them and the
Poseidon's crew. In any case he had no intention of missing the excitement
on deck: during the chase, which lasted no more than an hour, he toiled
dutifully in the hold, moving barrels and boxes aft in order (he understood
now) to make room for additional loot; but when the grapples were
thrown and all but a handful of the pirates crouched at the lee rail ready
to board, he climbed to the edge of the after hatch and peered over.

His heart leaped at sight of the familiar vessel: there was the quarter-deck
whereon he'd debated with Bertrand the right demeanor for a poet and
from which he'd been cast providentially into the sea; there on the poop
stood Captain Meech, grim-faced, exhorting his men as before not to
jeopardize the passengers' safety by resisting the assault, even though he
had mounted a brand new eight-pounder in the bow.

Ebenezer clucked his tongue. "Poor wretch!"

There in the waist the ladies squealed and swooned as before, while the
gentlemen, frowning nervously, were led off to their cabins for robbing;
there by the foremast the sailors huddled. Ebenezer saw several of his
molesters, including Ned, and many new faces as well. The pirates, having
been at sea for at least the six weeks since their last encounter, took no pains
to disguise their lust for the ladies and the female servants: they addressed

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 263 ]

them in the lewdest terms; pinched, poked, tweaked, and stroked. Captain
Pound had his hands full preventing wholesale assault. He cursed the crew
in his quiet hissing voice and threatened them with keelhauling if they
did not desist. Even so, the mate himself,, black Boabdil, driven nearly
berserk by the sight of an adolescent beauty who, perhaps seasick, had been
brought up on deck in her nightdress, flung her over his shoulder and made
for the railing, clearly intending to have at her in traditional pirate fashion;
it took the Captain's pistol at his temple to restrain the Moor's ardor and
send him off growling and licking his lips. The girl, happily, had fainted at
his first approach, and so was oblivious to her honor's narrow rescue.

So desperate did the situation become that at length the Captain ordered
all hands back aboard the shallop, though the pillaging was not entirely
finished, and cast off the grapples. He carried with him Captain Meech,
two members of the Poseidon's crew, and one of her longboats, giving as
his reasons the need for a consultation on the subject of longitude and the
possibility that not all of the eight-pounder's ammunition had been con-
fiscated; he would set them free, he declared, as soon as the shallop was
out of range. Then he set the still grumbling crew to stowing the fresh
provisions in preparation for the formal dividing of the spoils, and re-
treated with his hostage to the chartroom.

Now Ebenezer had of course abandoned his observation post when the
pirates came back aboard, and so dangerous was their mood that before
the first barrel of port came down the hatch he hid himself far aft, be-
hind the old cargo, to avoid their wrath. His hiding place was a wide black
cranny, perhaps three feet high, that extended on both sides of the keel
under the cabins, as far aft as the rudderpost in the stern. Since the space
provided access to the steering-cables running from the wheel on deck
through blocks to the rudderpost itself, it was provided with a false floor over
the bilge, on which the Laureate lay supine and still. Over his head, which
was not two feet from the stern, he heard the sound of chairs scraping on
the floor, and presently a pair of chuckling voices.

"By Heav'n, the black had like to split her open!" said one, and Ebene-
zer easily identified Captain Pound. "I thought he'd pitch me to the fishes
when I stopped him!"

The other laughed. "He'd ha' spitted her through for all I'd cross him,
Tom, I swear'tl Twere a pity, though, I'll grant ye; she's a gentleman's
morsel, not a beef-bull's, and I mean to try her ere we raise Lands End."

Ebenezer was not surprised to hear the voice of Captain Meech, but he
was horrified at the intimacy suggested by their conversation.

[ 264 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Do ye look for trouble?" Meech asked.

"God knows, Jim. Boabdil is a wild one when he sets his cap for coney.
They all need a week ashore, or I'm a dead man/'

"Well, I've no orders for ye about your poet, but I did bring ye this —
they smuggled it aboard at Cedar Point."

There was a pause while Meech brought forth whatever it was he re-
ferred to, then a slap as of papers on the table. Ebenezer strained his ears,
though every word thus far he had heard distinctly. He forgot completely
about the original purpose of his concealment.

"A Secret Historie of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake" Pound
read aloud. "What foolery is this?"

"No foolery," Meech laughed. "Old Baltimore would cut your throat
for't! Look on the backsides."

The papers rustled. "Tore God!"

"Aye." Meech confirmed whatever realization his friend had reached.
"They got it off Dick Smith in Calvert County— God knows howl He's
Baltimore's surveyor general."

"But what am I to do with it?"

"They said Coode himself will come fort in a month or so. This is only a
part of the whole Journal, from what I gather; if he can find the rest ere
things get settled, then Nicholson can't touch him. Right now the place is
a bedlam, Tom: ye should see St. Mary's City! Andros came and went;
Lawrence is back in; Henry Jowles hath Ninian Beale's old job; old
Robotham's back in, that hath the daughter ye liked—remember Lucy?"

"Aye," said Pound, "from the last time. She hath a birthmark on her
arse, you told me."

"Nay, Tom, no birthmark! Tis the Great Bear in freckles, I sweaft, and
the pointers point "

"No more!" Pound laughed. "I remember where the polestar was, that
all men's needles aimed at. Go on with Maryland, now, ere ye have to
leave."

"Marry, what a wench!" Meech said. "Where was I? Did I tell ye about
Andros?" He went on to relate that John Coode's brother-in-law, Neamiah
Blackistone, so influential under the late Governor Copley, had died in
disgrace last February after the Commissioners of the Customs-house, on
evidence from the "Burlingame's Journdl documents" smuggled to Lord
Baltimore by Nicholson, had charged him with graft. Sir Edmund Andros
of Virginia had returned to St. Mary's in May with Sir Thomas Lawrence,
whom Copley had impeached, and made him President of the Council

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [265]

and acting Governor of Maryland— to the rebels' dismay, since it was
Lawrence who had smuggled the notorious Assembly Journal of 1691 to
Nicholson. Then Nicholson had landed, embraced his good friend Law-
rence, and made a Maryland councillor out of Edward Randolph, the
Jacobite Royal Surveyor so well known up and down the colonies for his
prankish contempt of provincial authorities. But so far from thanking his
old superior Andros for governing in his absence, Nicholson had promptly
called that government illegal, declared null and void all statutes passed
thereunder, and demanded (thus far in vain) that Andros return the five-
hundred-pound honorarium awarded him for his services by Lawrence's
Council! The insurrectionists,. Meech declared, were making the most of
this rebuff to turn Andros against Nicholson; their leader Coode still held
with impunity the post of sheriff in St. Mary's County and a lieutenant-
colonelcy in the county militia under Lawrence himself, and in these capac-
ities drew his salary from the very government he was doing his best to
overthrow. Andros had already allowed Coode the services of his "coast-
guard" Captain Pound, of course, and in addition had virtually promised
Coode asylum in Virginia if, as was feared imminent, Nicholson opened
cases against him, his ally Kenelm Cheseldyne of the Assembly, and old
Blackistone's widow. Tlie insurrectionists, Meech said further, were en-
gaged both defensively and offensively: they were ransacking the Province
for the other portions of the incriminating Journal, which they understood
to be cached with various Papists and Jacobites, and at the same time they
were inciting the Piscataway Indians to rebel, perhaps in league with other
Indian nations.

"Many, 'tis a perilous game they play!" said Pound. "I'm happy to be
at sea!"

"I'm happy to be sailing east to London, Tom; this Coode would bum a
province on a bet. Yet he doth pay handsomely."

"Speaking whereof "

"Aye," Meech said. There was another pause. "They gave me this to
give ye for holding Cooke, and there's another like it for keeping these
papers." Nicholson had learned of the Journal's absence, he explained, and
was turning the Province upside down to find it— hence the rebels' decision
to remove it from the colony altogether until things settled down. Pound
was to cruise in his present latitude for six weeks, or until a ship came out
from Coodte to fetch the papers. At that time he would receive his fee and,
in all likelihood, instructions concerning his prisoners.

[ 266 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Good enough," said Captain Pound. "Now let me give ye your share
from the last trip."
"Did ye do well by't, Tom?"

"Not bad," Pound allowed, and added that since the terms of their
agreement gave all the cash to the pirates and all the jewels to Meech, who
could easily sell them in London, it was to be expected that on westbound
trips the pirates would fare as well or better, but on eastbound trips, when
many of the passengers would have nothing left but the family jewels,
Meech would get the lion's share. The transaction was completed; Meech
made ready to depart in the longboat, and Ebenezer, who had heard the
entire colloquy in horror and astonishment, prepared to evacuate his hiding-
place, the pirates having long since finished loading the hold.

"One more thing," Meech said, and the poet scrambled back to hear.
"If Coode hath not found the rest of his Journal by the time he fetches
this part, tell him I've a notion where to look for't, but 'twill cost him
twenty pound if he finds it there. Did ye see what's writ on the back of
all those pages?"

"You mean this Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake? What is it?"

Meech explained that Kenelm Cheseldyne had recorded the Journal of
the 1691 Assembly on the reverse pages of a bound quarto manuscript
provided him by Coode, which happened to be an old diary the rebel had
acquired while hiding out in Jamestown. " 'Twas a wight named Smith
wrote the diary— damnedest thing ye ever read!— and they all call it 'Smith's
book' for safety's sake, the Papists as well as the rebels, though few of 'em
e'er laid eyes on't." What would be more natural, then, he asked of Pound,
than for Baltimore to distribute the portions for safekeeping to various
confederates of the same surname?

Ebenezer began to sweat. Pound, to his great relief, laughed at the
conjecture as preposterous, but promised to relay it to Coode's agents for
what it was worth.

"Which is twenty pounds," Meech declared merrily. "Come, threaten me
to my boat, now, or they'll see our game. I'll be back with the Smoker's
Eket next spring or before."

"I'll ride the Line for ye, Jim," Pound promised— referring to the parallel
of latitude extending from the Azores to the Virginia Capes, along which
the fleets customarily sailed for ease of navigation.

Ebenezer scrambled out of his cranny, over boxes and barrels, and up
ths ladder to $ie hatch, nearly sick with indignation and excitement. He
Was bursting to tell Bertrand all he'd heard; in the considerable uproar

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 267 ]

that greeted the appearance of the two captains he was able to climb to
the deck and move forward to the fo'c'sle companionway (which led also
to his berth in the rope-locker) without attracting undue notice.

The men were indeed in mutinous spirits, ready to make trouble at the
slightest excuse. Grudgingly they released the two terrified sailors from the
Poseidon, whom they had tormented throughout the captains' private con-
versation; their faces darkened as Meech's longboat, under the barrels of
their pistols, struck out for its mother ship on the north horizon.

Ebenezer slipped through the foVsle to his cell— which customarily re-
mained unlocked— and told Bertrand the story of Meech's treachery,
Coode's latest intrigues, and the valuable document in the Captain's
quarters.

"I must lay hands on those papers!" he exclaimed. "How Coode came
by them I can't imagine, but Baltimore shall have them backl I must steal
into Pound's cabin and filch 'em ere Coode's ship comes."

Bertrand shook his head. "Marry, sir, 'tis not thy fight. A poet hath no
part in these things."

"Not so," Ebenezer replied. "I vowed to fling myself into the arms of
Life, and what is life but the taking of sides? Besides, Fve private reasons
for wanting that Journal." How pleased would Burlingame be, he reflected
happily, to learn that Captain John Smith had a secret diary! Who knew
but what these very papers were the key poor Henry so long had sought to
unlock the mystery of his parentage?

"I see those reasons plain enough," the valet declared. "The book would
fetch a pretty price if ye put it up for bids. But 'twill do ye small good to
steal it when we've no more than a fortnight left on earth. Marry, did ye
see what spirits the Moor is in? If this Coode doth not kill us, the pirates
will."

But the Laureate did not agree. "This faction may be our salvation, not
our doom." He described the delicate atmosphere on deck. "Tis Pound
that holds us prisoner, not the crew/' he said. "They've naught to gain by
killing us if they mutiny, but they may well kill him. What's more, they
know naught of the Journal. Belike they'll make us members of the crew,
and once the turmoil hath subsided I'll find a way to steal the book. Then
we can watch our chance to slip ashore. Or better, once we're pirates like
the rest we can hide aboard some ship we're sent to plunder; they'd never
miss us. Let 'em mutiny, I say; we'll join them!"

As if the last were a command, an instant later a shout went up on deck,
followed at once by a brace of pistol-shots. Ebenezer and Bertrand hurried

[ 268 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

up to declare their allegiance to the mutineers, who they readily assumed
had taken charge of the shallop, and indeed they found Boabdil at the helm,
grinning at the men assembled in the waist. But instead of lying dead on the
deck, Captain Pound stood beside him, arms crossed, a smoking pistol in
each hand and a grim smile upon his face, and it was one of the crew, a
one-eyed Carolina boy named Patch, who sprawled, face-down and bleeding,
.on the poop companionway.

"We'll put into port when I say so," Pound declared, and returned the
pistols to his sash. Two men stepped forward to retrieve their wounded
shipmate.

"Over the side with him/' the Captain ordered, and despite the fact that
he was not yet dead, the Carolinian was tumbled into the ocean.

"The next man I shan't waste a ball on," Pound threatened, and did not
even look back to see his victim flounder in the wake.

"Why is the Moor so happy?" Bertrand whispered to Ebenezer. "Ye said
he was the wrathfulest of all."

The poet, stunned by his first sight of death, shook his head and
swallowed furiously to keep from being ill.

Just then the lookout cried "Sail, ho! Sail to eastward!" The pirates
looked to see a three-master heading in their direction, but were too
chastened to display any great interest.

"There, now!" laughed Captain Pound, after examining the stranger
through his glass. "If Patch had held his peace ten minutes more, he'd not
be feeding sea-crabs! D'ye know what s'hip stands yonder, men?"

They did not, nor did the prospect of robbing it fill them with enthusi-
asm.

" Tis the London ship I've l$id for these two weeks," Pound declared,
"whilst you wretches were conspiring in the fo'c'sle! Did ye ne'er hear tell
of a brigantine called the Cy/>rwn?"

On hearing this name the crew cheered lustily, again and again. They
slapped one another's backs, leaped and danced about the deck, and at the
Captain's orders sprang as if possessed to ratlines, sheets, halyards, and
braces. Topsails and forestaysail were broken out, the helm was put hard
OVQT, and the shallop raced to meet her newest prey head-on.

"What is this Cyprian^ that changed their minds so lightly?" Bertrand
whispered.

"I do not know," his master answered, sorry to see the mutiny come to
naught. "But she hath sprung from the sea like her namesake, and haply
we'll fyave cause to love her, Lpok sharp for your chance to slip aboard; I
hope to steal the Journal if I can."

15: THE RAPE OF THE CYPRIAN; ALSO, THE TALE OF
HICKTOPEAKE, KING OF ACCOMACK, AND THE
GREATEST PERIL THE LAUREATE HAS FALLEN
INTO THUS FAR

IN LESS THAN A QUARTER OF AN HOXJR THE SHALLOP AND THE BRIGANTINE,

sailing smartly on opposite reaches, were within cannon-range of each other.
Dozens of the brigantine's passengers were crowded forward to see the
shallop, possibly the first vessel they'd met in weeks; they waved hands and
kerchiefs in innocent salutation. The pirates, every idle hand of whom was
similarly preoccupied, responded with a fearsome cry and fired a round into
the water dead ahead of their quarry. It was not until then, when the others
screamed and ran for cover, that Ebenezer began to guess in a general way
what was afoot: every one of the passengers he could see was female.

"Dear Heav'n!" he breathed.

The captain of the brigantine realized the shallop's intention and came
about to run north before the wind, at the same time firing on the attacker;
but his defense came too late. Anticipating exactly such a maneuver,
Captain Pound had his crew already stationed to follow suit, and the shallop
was under way on the new course before the brigantine finished setting her
sails. Moreover, although the several square-rigged sails of the brigantine
were better for running before the wind than the fore-and-aft rig of her
pursuer, the shallop's smaller size and lighter weight more than compen-
sated for the difference. Captain Pound ordered his men not to return the
musket- and pistol-fire; instead, taking the helm himself, he cut so close
under the brigantine's stern that the name Cyprian, on a banner held by
carved oak cupids, was plainly legible on her transom. At the very moment
when the shallop's bowsprit seemed about to pierce the victim's stern, he
veered a few degrees to starboard; the cannoneer in the bow fired a ball
point-blank into the brigantine's rudder, and the chase was over. The
Cyprian's crew scrambled to take in sail before the helpless vessel capsized.
By the time the shallop came about and retraced her course the brigantine
was rolling under bare poles in the swell; the crew stood with upraised arms,
the first mate ran a white flag up the main halyards, and the captain, hands
clasped behind him, waited on the poop deck for the worst.

[ 2JO ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

The pirates were beside themselves. They thronged to the rail, shouting
obscenities and making the lewdest gestures. It was all Boabdil could do
to bring the shallop alongside, so preoccupied were they all with their joy:
the Moor himself had stripped off all but his tall red headgear and stood
like a black nightmare at the helm. At length the grapples were made
fast, the sails struck, and the two ships lashed together along their beams,
so that they rode like mated seabirds on the waves. Then with shrieks and
howls the pirates swarmed over the rails, cursing and stumbling in their
haste. The Cyprian's crew backed off in fright, but no one paid them the
slightest attention: indeed, Captain Pound had finally to force three of his
men at pistol-point to tie them to the masts. The rest had no thought for
anything but breaking open the companionway and cabin doors, which the
terrified passengers had bolted from inside.

Their savagery made Ebenezer blanch. Beside him where he stood near
the shallop's foremast was the oldest member of the pirate crew, Carl, the
sailmaker— a wizened, evil-appearing little man in his sixties with a short,
dirty beard and no teeth at all— chuckling and shaking his head at the .scene.

"Is the ship full of women?" the Laureate asked him.

The old man nodded mirthfully. "She's the whore-boat out o' London."
Once or twice a year, he explained, the Cyprian's captain took on a load of
impoverished young ladies who were willing to prostitute themselves for
six months in the colonies, where the shortage of women was acute. The
girls were transported without charge; the enterprising captain received not
only their fares but— in the case of girls with special qualifications such as
virginity, respectability, or extreme youth or comeliness— a handsome bonus
as well from the brothel-masters who came to Philadelphia from all over
the provinces for the purpose of replenishing or augmenting their staffs. As
for the girls, some had already been prostitutes in London, others were
women rendered desperate by poverty or other circumstances, and some
simply hard-reasoning young serving girls bent on reaching America at any
cost, who found six months of prostitution more attractive than the
customary four-year indenture of the colonial servant

"Every pirate on the coast keeps his eye out for the Cyprian this time o'
year/' the sailmaker said. "There's better than a hundred wenches behind
that door. Lookee there at Boabdil!"

Ebenezer saw the naked Moor push aside his shipmates and raise a huge
maul that he had found nearby, probably teft on deck by the brigantine's
carpenter. With one blow he splintered the door and dived headlong in-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 2JI ]

side, the others close behind him. A moment later the air was split with
screams, and curses.

Ebenezer's knees trembled. "Poor wretches! Poor wretches!"

"This!" scoffed Carl the sailmaker, and cackled at the poet's consterna-
tion. " 'Tis but a bloody prayer meeting, this is! Ye should have sailed last
year with old Tom Tew of Newport, as I did. One time we sailed from
Libertatia to the coast of Araby, and in the Red Sea we overhauled one o'
the Great Mogul's ships with pilgrims bound for Mecca; a hundred gun she
carried, but we boarded her without losing a man, and what do ye think we
found? Sixteen hundred virgins, sir! Not a maidenhead more nor less!
Sixteen hundred virgins bound for Mecca, the nicest little Moors ye e'er
laid eyes upon, and not above a hundred of us! Took us a day and a night
to pop 'em all— Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Portogeezers, Africans, and Eng-
lishmen, we were— and ere we had done, the deck Iooke4 like a butcher's
block. There is not the like o' that day and night in the history of the
lickerish world, I swear't! I cut a brace myself, for all I was coming on to
sixty— little brown twins they were, and tight as a timber-hitch, and I've
ne'er got up the old fid since!"

He rambled on, but Ebenezer could not bear to hear him out. For one
thing, the scene on deck was too arresting for divided attention: the pirates
dragged out their victims in ones and twos, a-swoon or awake, at pistol-
point or by main strength. He saw girls assaulted on the decks, on the
stairways, at the railings, everywhere, in every conceivable manner. None
was spared, and the prettier prizes were clawed at by two and three at a
time. Boabdil appeared with one over each shoulder, kicking and scratching
him in vain: as he presented one to Captain Pound on the quarter-deck,
the other wriggled free and tried to escape her monstrous fate by scrambling
up the mizzen ratlines. The Moor allowed her a fair head start and then
climbed slowly in pursuit, calling to her in voluptuous Arabic at every step.
Fifty feet up, where any pitch of the hull is materially amplified by the
height, the girl's nerve failed: she thrust bare arms and legs through the
squares of the rigging and hung for dear life while Boabdil, once he had
come up from behind, ravished her unmercifully. Down on the shallop the
sailmaker clapped his hands and chortled; Ebenezer, heartsick, turned away.

He saw Bertrand a little distance behind him, watching with undisguised
avidity, and recalled his plan. The time was propitious: every member of
the shallop's crew except old Carl was busy at his pleasure, and even
Captain Pound, who normally stood aloof from all festivities, had found

[ 272 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the Moor's trophy too tempting to refuse and had disappeared with her
into the brigantine's cabin.

"Look sharp!" he whispered to the valet. "I'm going for the Journal now,
and then we'll try to slip aboard the Cyprian!' And ignoring Bertrand's
frightened look, he made his way carefully aft to the doorway of Captain
Pound's quarters. It required no searching to find what he sought: the
Journal lay in plain view on the table, its loose pages held fast by a fungus-
coral paperweight. Ebenezer snatched it up and scanned the first page
with pounding heart: a transcription of the Assembly's convening, mean-
ingless to him. But on the redo

"Ah!"

A Secret Historic of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake From
Jamestowne in Virginia, he read, Undertaken in the Yeer of Our Lord
1608 By C°»* Jno Smith, & Faithfullie Set Down in Its Severall Parts By
the Same. And Below, in an antique, almost illegible hand, the narrative
commenced, not as a diary at all but as a summary account, probably meant
as the initial draft of part of the. author's well-known Generall Historie of
Virginia:

Seven souldiers, six gentlemen, Dr Russell the Chirurgeon & my selfe did
embark from the towne of Kecoughtan, in Virginia^ in June of the present
yeer 1608,

To wdk a wayless Way with uncouth Pace,
Wch yet no Christian Man did ever trace. . . .

Much farther than this the poet dared not read at the moment, but he
could not refrain from thumbing rapidly through the rest of the manuscript
in search of the name Henry Burlingame. It did not take long to find:
No sooner was the King asleep, he read on an early page, then I straightway
made for the doore, and w* have fulfill'd his everie wish, had not Ld
Burlingame prevented me, and catching hold of my arme, declared, That
he did protest my doing this thing. . . .

"Burlingame a Lord!" Ebenezer exclaimed to himself, and joyfully thrust
the manuscript into his shirt, holding it fast under the waist of his breeches.
He peeped out onto the deck. All seemed clear: the only man in a position
to spy him was the Moor in the Cyprian's mizzenrigging, and he was
occupied with climbing down for further conquests, leaving his first quite
ravaged in the ratlines. The sun was setting; its long last rays lit the scene
unnaturally, from the side, with rose and gold.

"Hi ho, Master Eben!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 273 ]

The Laureate quailed at the salute, which greeted him as soon as he
stepped out of Captain Pound's cabin. But the voice was Bertrand's.

"Stupid fellow! He'll do me in yet!" He looked for the valet in vain on
the shallop's deck: the sailmaker stood alone by the railing.

"Come along, Master Eben! Over here!" The voice came from the direc-
tion of the brigantine. Horrified, Ebenezer saw Bertrand standing in the
vessel's stern, about to have at a plump lass whom he was bending over
the taffrail, Ebenezer signaled frantically for the man to come back, but
Bertrand laughed and shook his head. "They've asked us to join 'em!" he
called, and turned to his work.

For Ebenezer to slip aboard unnoticed was unthinkable in the face of
this defection. All over the Cyprian the debauch continued; the hapless
women, gilded by the sunlight, had for the most part abandoned hope,
and instead of running, submitted to their attackers with pleas for mercy
or stricken silence. The poet shuddered and fled to his cell in the rope-
locker, determined, since he could not make his escape, to take advantage
of the diversion to read through the precious manuscript. He borrowed
a lamp from the fo'c'sle, closed the heavy door, took out the Journal, and
lay on his bed of tattered sailcloth, where he read as follows:

Seven souldiers, six gentlemen, D1* Russell the Chinirgeon & my selfe did
embark from the towne of Kecoughtan, in Virginia, in June of the present yeer
1608,

To -walk a wayless Way with uncouth Pace,
Wcl1 yet no Christian Man did ever trace. ,

We took for the voiage a barge of three tonnes burthen, to the provisioning
-whereof I earlie set the great Liverpooler Henry Burlingame, that I durst not
leave behind to smirch my name with slander & calumnie. Yet scarce had we
dropt Kecoughtan to Southward, then I found the wretch had play'd me false;
to feed the companie of fifteene men the summer long, he had supply9 d one
meager sack of weevilie oats and a barricoe of cloudie water! I enquir'd of him,
Wd he starve us? Or did he think to make me turn tayle home? Wch latter hope
I knew, he shar'd with all the idle Gentlemen his fellows. Then I set them dl
to short rations and fishing over the gunwhales, albeit I knew no means to cooke
a fish in the barge. The truth was, I reckoned on a landfall within two dayes, but
said naught of it, and what fish they caught I threw back in the Bay. I then
commenced instructing one & dl in the art of sayles & tiller, w°* matters the
souldiers took to readilie and the Gentlemen complayn'd of — none lowder then
Ld Burlingame, that I had a-bayling water from the bilge.

This Burlingame wd say to his neighbour, What doth the Captain reck it if
we perish? What time he getteth in a pickle, we Gentlemen must grubb him out,
eke some naked Salvage wench ftieth down from Heaven to save his neck. By

[ 274 I THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

woh he referr'd to Pocahontas, Powhcttans daughter, that some months past had
rescu'd me, and I saw, he meant to devill me through the voiage.

Next day we rays'd a cape of land, lying due North of Kecoughtant and the
companie rejoyc'd thereat, inasmuch as there bellies all complctyn'd of meale &
clowdie water. We made straightway to shoar, whereupon we found a pair of
fearsome Salvages, arm'd with bone-poynt speares. I made bold to salute them,
and was pleas' d to learn, they spake a tongue like Powhatans, to wch Emperour
they declar'd them selves subject. The fiercenesse of these men was in there
paynt alone; they were but spearing fish along the shallows. Upon my entreatie,
they led us to there town and to there King, that was call'd Hicktopeake.

Then follow' d an adventure, wch I cannot well include among my Histories.
I shall set it down upon these privie pages, for that it shews afresh that. enmity
I spake of, betwixt Ld Burlingame & my selfe, wch led us anon to the verie doore
of Death. . . .

"Mercy!" Ebenezer cried, and turned the page.

This Hicktopeake, then, bade us well come to his Kingdom, the woh he did
call Accomack, and lay'd before us a sumptuous meale. I observed him, while
that we ate, and I sweare him to be the comliest, proper, civill Salvage we in-
counter1 d. I din'd well, as is my wont, and also Walter the physician and the
souldiers, but our Gentlemen shew'd smalle appetyte for Salvage cookerie. Burlin-
game, in especiall, shew'd little stomacke, for a man of his corpulencie, and who
had been erst so lowd of his bellie. The meale done, Hicktopeake delivered him
selfe of a smalle speech, again bidding us well come to his towne, and offering to
replenishe our supplies ere we left him. It seem'd to me then, he shew'd a curious
eagernesse; that we shd tarrie somewhile with him, but I learn' d not the cause of it
at once.

On my enquiring of him, the extent of his Kingdom? Hicktopeake reply'd
onely that it was. of considerable breadth, and ran awaye up the countrie, untill
that the land grewe wider. This territorie he rul'd conjoyntlie with his Brother,
one Debedeavon, called by the Salvages, the Laughing King of Accomack. Debe-
deavons towne, we learn' d was farther inland, where he liv'd with his Queene in a
goodlie house. I ask'd then, Where was Hicktopeakes Queene? meaning no more
then a courtesie by my question. But seeing his face grewe all beclowded, I sought
to change the topick, and inquired, Why was Debedeavon cdl'd the Laughing
King? Whereupon, albeit I knew not why, Hicktopeakes wrath did but increase,
so that he was scarce able to contain him selfe. I sdwe no frute in farther inquirie,
and $o held my peace, and smoak'd of the tobacco that was then pa$t round.

Hicktopeake at length regayning somewhat of his controll, he did command
my partie to be given lodging for the night, and I consented, for that the skye was
lowing, and bade fowk weather. The Gentlemen and my selfe, were given place
in Hicktopeakes howse, that for all his being King, was but a single roome of large
dimension. All did forthwith set them selves to sleep, save Burlingame, who ever
hownds my steps, and sleeps not save^when I sleep also. The King & I then
smoak'd many pipes beside the fyre, in dR silence. I knew well, he was desirous of
speaking farther to me, but that after the manner of the Salvage, he tarry' d long

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 275 ]

ere commencing. For this reason I yearn9 d that Burlingame $M retyre, that we
might speake privilie, but this he wd notf maugre my hints & suggestions.

At last Hicktopeake spake, and talk'd a great -while of trifling things, as is the
Salvages -wont. Then he said, in substance (for I am here Englishing his speech] ,
Sir, ye doubtlesse mark me a batchelor, for that no wife attendeth me in my
house, or at my board, and farther, that upon thy enquirie, Where was my
Queene? I mayde thee no replie. Yet in this thou art mistaken. Queene have I in
sooth, and of surpassing comelinesse, that I have onely latelie had to wife. Yet
wife she is not, for is it not the first requirement of a wife, that she seeke not far-
ther than her wedded spouse, for her felicitie? But my Queene, she findeth me
deficient, though I mark my selfe a man in everie wise, and she goeth about un-
satisfy'd. And Queene she is not, for is it not the first requirement of a Queene,
that she doe naught but what will shewe the, greatnesse of her King? But my
Queene, from her dissatisfaction with my manlinesse, doth ever seek pleasure in
the howses of other men, thereby bringing disgrace upon my head; and stille she
goeth unsatisfy'd, by her own pronouncement. Now this is an evill thing, for that
not onely doth this woman dishonour my selfe, and keep me for ever wearie, but
also she fatigueth all the young men of my towne, and old as well. She is even as
is the leech, that having tasted bloud, can never drink his fille; or as the owle, that
devoureth all the myjce of the field, and goeth ye't hungrie to her nest. My
Brother, Debedeavon, maketh. much of this matter, and laugheth at me still
(wherefor they call him> the Laughing King). A wife he hath, that he keepeth
well satisfy' d, and hence regardeth him selfe my better, as doe his people mine.
(Yet is his wife a mowse, and lightlie filtd, for that oft have I try'd her my own
selfe, the while my brother fish'd.) Therefore 1 aske of thee of the faire skinne
this, that ye assaye to please the Queene7 or teach her to be pleas'd even with
that w°A she hath alreadie, to the end that peace & honour may reign in my
towne, and my Brother mock me no farther. For I judge of thy dresse, thy strange
vessell, and thy manlie bearing, thou art no common man, but a doer of won-
ders.

Thus spake this Hicktopeake, and I heard him with amazement, for that most
men, that cd not satisfye there wives, were loath to own there deficiencie to an-
other man. Yet I did admire his truthfullnesse & candour, & his generositie, in
inviting my selfe to attempt^ what he c* not doe. With as much of grace as I c*
muster, I accepted Hicktopeakes offer, whereupon he shew'd me a doore of his
howse, the woh he said, open'd upon the chamber of the Queene. Then he lay'd
him selfe down next the fyre and slept, onely fitfullie, as well a man might, that
hath granted leave to another to go in unto the wife of his bed.

No sooner was the King asleep, then I straightway made for the doore, and w*
have fulfilVd his everie wish, had not L* Burlingame prevented me, and catching
hold of my arme, said, That he did protest my doing this thing. I enquifd, Why
did he protest? seeing that I knew him for no Catholick Saint. Whereto he re-
ply* d, Thai be that as may, he purposed to doe the thing him selfe, for that I had
received the favours of Pocahontas, and had deftowr'd that same maide by. scurril-
ous subterfuge, whereas he had enjoy' d naught of her, nor had layn with woman,
since that he set sayle from London. Moreover, he declar'd, That SM I refuse him

[ 2j6 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

this favour (albeit he was in my debt for his scurvie life), he meant to noyse the
truth about my egg-plant receipt all over Jamestowne, and London as well.

Hereupon I told him, That he cd plough the Salvage Queene all he chose, I
car'd not, and said farther, That were she halfe the Messdina good Hicktopeake
made her out, it wd want more man then tenne of Burlingame, to pacifie her. This
said, I bow'd him to the doore, and joyn'd my mooring fellows at the fyre. Yet I
went not to sleep my owne selfe, but rested awake & smoak'd tobacco, thinking,
That in all probabilitie my nights adventures were not done.

At length Burlingame return' d, much out of humour, and upon my enquiring
of him, Was the Queen so lightlie pleas' d? he but broke wind at me, and seeing
the King stule slept, call'd her divers kinds of whoore & peddle-bumme. He w*,
he said, have gone into her, for that she had received him with friendlinesse enow,
but that when he stoode all readie to doe his carnall work, she had demanded of
him, Where was his monie? and he having naught to offer, save a parcell of to-
bacco, she straightway turn1 d upon her bellie, and wd no more of him. Whereon
he had left her.

I did laugh greatlie at this tale, and said to him, that he wd ever fare iU in con-
quests of women, for that he was put off so lightlie. And it was a happie thing, for
both our heads, that Powhatan erst had set my selfe to pierce his daughters nether
armour, and not him. By way of answer, Burlingame but broke wind againe, and
said, That if I wish'd to make good my boasts, the doore was yet unlatch* d, and
the Queene yet flatt upon the grownd. For him, he w* nothing farther of the
whoore, be she Queene or scullerie maide.

I hifd me then without losse of time to the Queenes apartment, leaving
Burlingame at the fyre to stewe in his owne cowardice. Directlie my. eyes grewe
us'd to the dark, I made out the Queene her selfe, once more upon her back. She
was a passing comelie Salvage, I C* see, with gracious features, shapelie limbs, and
a smalle flatt bellie, and her papps & other appurtenancies were such, as to whett
any mans lust Upon her directing me, in Salvage jargon, to doe my wille,
I prick d up like a doggs eare, at smelle of meate. I presented my selfe as Ca*>* J7*0
Smith of Virginia, deeming it a beastlie thing, to swive a woman without first ex-
changing cordialities. But to this she pay'd no heed a all, onely shew'd me, by cer-
taine movements, she mark'd such pleasantries a waste of time. Therefore I
hasten' d to undoe mytselfe, and had clipp'd her on the instant, but that she stay'd
my ardour; and pointing to that place, the wc7t she had in Salvage fashion pluck9 d
bald as a biskett & bedawb'd with puccoon paynt, she demanded first some pay-
ment, saying, That she was not wont to bestowe her charms for naught.

This troubled me not a whitt, for that I was us'd to dealing with both whoores
& Salvages. I fetch'd up my breeches, and withdrewe therefrom a fistfull of
bawbles, that ever charme the Salvage eye. These I gave her, but she flung them
awaye, and demanded something more. I gave her then a\ smalle charme, that I
had got from a dead Moor, the woh was said to have magick powers, but this
neither she deign' d to accept After that I offered the slutt a lewd figure done in
ivorie, a smalle coyne inscribed in filthie Arabick, and the pledge of twelve yardes
of Scotch cloth, to be deliver' d on the next boat from London — all to no avdle.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 277 ]

She w* have six lengths of wompompeag, she sdd, or nine of roanoke, for her
favours, and naught besides, for that her other lovers were wont to pay that
summe for her bodie, she being the Queene. I made replye, That I had no Sal-
vage monies on my person, nor meanes of acquiring any, but wd she grant me sat-
isfaction of my lust, I wd send her a pound Sterling from Jamestowne, enough
coyn to purchase a bakers dozen tarts in London. But the Queene w* none of my
pound Sterling, and rolling on her bellie, let goe a fart w071 had done honour to
Elizabeth her selfe. I did declare, That Cw* j™ Smith was not put off so lightlief
and when that she reply1 d as before, I vow'd to have my fille of her regardlesse.
There is a saying amongst the worldlie French, that when a man cannot eate
thrush, he must perforce make doe with crowe. I tarryrd no longer, but straight-
way work'd upon the Queene that sinne, for w°h the Lord rayn'd fyre upon the
Cities of the.Playne. ...

When that I had done, I drewe away and waited for the Queene to catt
her bodie-guards to fetch me, u^ I suppos'd she wd forthwith. For a space she lay
a-panting on the grownd, and when at last she had her winde, tooke from her
necke tenne strings of wompompeag, wch she presented me. She then declared,
That she had got love enow that night, to give her payne till the new moone. So
saying, she felle into a swoone-like sleep, and I retired to the other roome, to chide
Burlingame for his want of fancie. This he took in his wonted ill humour, for that
I had the better of him yet againe. . . „

I did sleep late into the daye, and when I woke, found Hicktopeake in his royall
chaire, with all his Lieutenants round about. He had bade them be silent, the
while I slept, and on my rowsing up came forward, and embraced me, and declared
I SM be second in rule over his towne, and have the comeliest Salvage of his tribe
to wife, for that I had restored his peoples peace. I enquired, How was that so? &nd
he made answer, That the Queene had come to him that dawne, and beggd for^
givenesse for her infidelitie, and swore that so satisfy' d was she of me, she never
w* againe goe a-roving from the Kings bedstead. Onely, he said, he fear'd her re-
solve might not endure for long; it must needs have been by meanes of some un-
common virilitie I had pleased her, and I was leaving his towne anon.

With that I led him aside, and related to him privilie the simple trick I had
employ' d, assuring him, that he cd doe the thing as well as 1. For so smalle was the
puddle, any frogg seem'd greate therein. Hicktopeake had never heard of such a
practice (w*h I had learnt from the scurvie Arabs) , and he listened in amazement.
Naught w* then suffice but he must put his learning to the test, and so he hi'd
him selfe apace from out the roome.

While that he was gone thus a-wooing, I gather9 d together my compcmie, and
told them to make readie our vessell, for I design' d to sayle that selfe same morn-
ing, to take up the course of our explorations. They did set to at once, all save
Burlingame, that grows' d about the shoarline kicking pebbles, and we were neare
readie to sayle, when Hicktopeake came out from his howse. He embfac'd me
dgaine, this time more warmlie then before, and beggd me stay in his towne for
ever, as his Prince & successor. So had he woo'd the Queene, he said, she w* be
three days rysing from her bed, and costive the week. But I declined his offer,
saying, That I had business elsewhere to attend. After much debate he did re-

[ 278 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

signe him selfe, and gave me leave to goe, presenting, me & my companie with.dl
manner of Salvage gifts, and food & water for our vesselL

Thus at last we did set sayle once more, and headed for the maine, and what-
ever lay before us. I was a trifle loath to goe, and wd fain have tarry1 d some smdle
space, for that Hicktopeake did declare to me his intention, of journeying to the
towne of Debedeavon his Brother, and there so ploughing Debedeavons Queene,
after the manner he had learnt, as to confound his Brother for ever. Whereupon
he, Hicktopeake, s™ be the Laughing King of Accomack. W°*> forsooth were worth
the witnessing. But the favour of Kings is a slipperie boone, lightlie granted & as
lightlie forsworne, and I deem'd it more prudent to absent my selfe betimes,
while that I was yet in his good graces, then to linger, and perchance weare out
my welcome there in Accomack. . . .

Here ended the narrative, or what fragment of it Meech had brought
aboard. Ebenezer read it again, and a third time, hoping to find in it some-
thing to connect Henry Burlingame with his luckless namesake in the story.
But there was every indication that Captain Smith's antagonist, who Henry
hoped would prove to be his ancestor, was not only childless but un-
married, and his future with the company of explorers was far from promis-
ing. With a sigh the Laureate assembled the pages of the Journal and con-
cealed it under his sailcloth bed, where no one was likely to find it. Then
he extinguished the lantern and sat for some while in the dark. The naked
sounds of rape, floating through the shallop's foVsle, conjured pictures clear
enough to make him shiver. Together with the story in the manuscript—
which was as much a revelation to him as it had been to Hicktopeake—
they forced his reverie willy-nilly into a single channel, and before long he
found himself physically moved by desire. He could not in honesty assert
that his pity for the Cyprian girls was unambiguous, or his condemnation
of their assault wholehearted; if he had been shocked by the spectacle,
he had also been excited by it, and so fascinated that no lesser business
than that of the Journal could have summoned him away. Indeed, the
sight of the young girl trapped in the rigging like a fly in a web, and of
Boabdil climbing leisurely up to envelop her like a great black spider, had
aroused him as its memory aroused him now.

It was abundantly clear to him that the value of his virginity was not a
moral value, even as he had explained to Bertrand one day on the Poseidon.
But the mystic ontological value he had ascribed to it seemed less convincing
now than it had seemed then. The recollection of Joan Toast's visit to his
room,, for example, which was customarily dominated by his speech at her
departure or the hymn to virginity composed afterwards, stopped now at
the memory of the girl herself, sitting pertly on his bed, and would go no

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 279 ]

farther. She had leaned forward and embraced him where he knelt before
her: her breasts had brushed like cool silk on his forehead; his cheek had
lain against the cushion of her stomach; his eyes had lingered close to The
Mystery!

From outside came another cry, a hard, high protest that trailed into
lamentation. There was an ancient ring to it, an antique sorrow, that put
the poet in mind of Philomela, of Lucretia, of the Sabine virgins and the
daughters of Troy, of the entire wailing legion of the raped. He went to
the companionway, and climbing it looked skyward at the stars. How
trifling was the present scene to them, who had watched the numberless
wars of men, the sack of nations, and the countless lone assaults in field
and alley! Was there a year in time when their light had not been dimmed,
somewhere on earth, by the flames of burning cities? That instant when he
stepped out on the deck, how many women heard— in England, Spain, and
far Cipango— the footfall of the rapist on the stair, or in the path behind?
The ranks of women ravished, hundreds and thousands and millions strong,
of every age and circumstance— the centuries rang and echoed with their
cries; the dirt of the planet was watered with their tears!

The scene aboard the Cyprian was considerably less violent now, though
by no means tranquil. Around the masts her crew were still tied fast, and
watched the festivities in sullen silence; thus far none had been harmed.
The pirates, their first lust spent, had broken out the rum and were fast
succumbing to it. Already some lay senseless in the scuppers; others
sprawled with their prizes on the decks and cabin roofs, taking drinks and
liberties by turn, but no longer able to consummate their wooing; still others
had lost interest altogether in the women— they danced, sang bawdy songs,
or played ombre under lanterns in the balmy air, almost as on any other
evening at sea. From the cabins came the sound of more carousing, but not
of violence: two girls, it seemed, were being obliged to perform some trick
against their will, and Ebenezer heard several women join in the general
laughter and encouragement.

"So lightly they accept their fate!" He thought again of the Trojan
widows, advised by Hecuba to resign themselves without protests to being
concubines and slaves.

The least enviable lot, so far as he could see, was that of seven ladies
trussed hip to hip over the Cyprian's starboard rail in classic pirate fashion,
so that their heads and upper bodies hung over the somewhat lower shallop;
yet even these, despite the indignity and clear discomfort of their position,
were not entirely overwhelmed with misery. One, it is true, appeared to

[280] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

be weeping, though she was not being molested at the moment, and
two others stared expressionless at their arms, which were lashed at the
wrist to the bottom of the balusters; but the others were actually gos-
siping with Carl the sailmaker, who smoked his pipe on the shallop's deck
before them! At sight of Ebenezer, who came up beside him, they were
not in the least abashed.

"Oh dear," said one, feigning alarm, "here comes another!"

"Ah, now, he seems a likely lad," said her neighbor, who was older. "Ye'd
not do aught unchivalrous,, would ye, son?"

Even as they laughed, a drunken pirate reeled up behind them.

"Ouch!" cried the one to whom he made his presence known. "Tell him,
Carl, 'tis not my turn! Hi! The wretch takes me for a roast of mutton! Tell
him, Carl!"

The sailmaker, by reason of his age, had some authority among his ship-
mates. "Have at some other, matey," he advised. The pirate obligingly
moved to the tearful youngster on the end, who at his first touch gave a cry
that pierced Ebenezer to the heart.

"Nay, ye blackguard* don't dare jilt me!" cried the woman first molested.
"Come hither to one that knows what's what!"

"Aye, leave the child in peace," another scolded. "I'll show ye how 'tis
done in Leicestershire!" Aside to her companions she added, "Pray God
'tis not the Moor!"

"Ye asked fort," said the pirate, and returned to his original choice.

"Marry, there's a good fellow!" she cried, pretending pleasure. "'Sheart,
what a stone-horse, girls!" To her neighbor she said in a stage whisper, " Tis
not the Moor by half, but Grantham gruel: nine grits and a gallon o' water.
Aiel Gramercy, sir! Gramercyl"

The other three were highly entertained.

"Your friend is yonder in the cabin," Carl said to Ebenezer. "Hop to't
if ye've a mind for the ladies, for we shan't tarry here much longer."

"Indeed?" Ebenezer shifted uncomfortably; the women were regarding
him with interest. "Perhaps I'd better see what mischief Bertrand is about."

"Ah, 'sblood, he doth not care for us," one of the women said. "He likes
his friend better." The rest took up the tease, even the one being wooed,
and Ebenezer beat a hasty retreat.

"I cannot fathom it," he said to himself.

Though he had dismissed entirely the notion of stowing away aboard
the Cyprian and had little or no interest in his valet's present activities, he
borrowed courage enough from those two motives to board the brigantine,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 281 ]

having first walked aft to escape the women's remarks. He could not deny,
however, his intention to stroll bgck in their direction from the vantage
point of the Cyprian's deck, at least out of curiosity. He climbed to the
rail and grasped the brigantine's mizzen shrouds to pull himself over.
When by chance he happened to look aloft, the moonlight showed him a
surprising sight: high in the mizzen-rigging the Moor's first conquest still
hung, forgotten by all; her arms and legs stuck through as though in stocks.
One could not judge her condition from below: perhaps she maintained
her perch out of fear, hoping to escape further assault; or it could be she
was a-swoon— her position would keep her from falling. Neither was it im-
possible that she was dead, from the bite of her great black spider. Assuring
himself that only his curiosity wanted satisfying, but in a high state of
excitement nonetheless, Ebenezer swung his feet not to the deck of the
Cyprian but onto the first of the mizzen ratlines, and methodically, in the
manner of Boabdil, climbed skyward to the dangling girl. . . .

His ascent caused the shrouds to tremble; the girl stirred, peered down-
wards, and buried her face with a moan. The poet, positively dizzied with
desire, made crooning noises in her direction.

"I shall have at thee, lass! I shall have at thee!"

When he had got but halfway up, however, Captain Pound stepped out
from the cabin below, and the Moor ordered all hands back to the shallop.
The men responded with loud protests but nevertheless obeyed, taking
desperate final liberties as they went. Ebenezer doubled his rate of climb.

"I shall have at thee!"

But Boabdil's voice came up from below. "You in the mizzen-rig! Down
with ye, now! Snap to't!"

The girl was literally within reach, but to no avail. "Thou'rt a lucky
wench!" he called up boldly.

The girl looked down at him. In the moonlight, from the present dis-
tance, she bore some slight resemblance to Joan Toast, the recollection of
whom had fired his original desire. There was a look of horror on her face.

Weak with excitement, Ebenezer called out to her again: "A minute
more and I had split thee!"

She hid her face, and he climbed down. A few minutes later the pirates
had cast off the grapples and were doing their best to make sail. Looking
back over the widening stretch of ocean, Ebenezer saw the women of the
Cyprian untie their colleagues at the rail and set free the crew. Up in the
mizzen-rigging he could still discern the white figure of the girl, his desire

[ 282 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

for whom, unsatisfied, began already to discommode him. The relief he
felt at the accidental rescue of his essence was, though genuine, not nearly
so profound a sensation as had been his strange possession in the rigging,
which he could not begin to understand. Surely,, he insisted, there was
more to it than simple concupiscience: if not, why did the thought
of the Moor's attack, for example, make him nearly ill with jealousy?
Why had he chosen the girl in the ratlines instead of those along the rail?
Why had her resemblance to Joan Toast (which for that matter he
may only have fancied) inflamed rather than cooled his ardor? His whole
behavior in the matter was incomprehensible to him.

He turned away and made for his cell in the rope-locker, both to assure
himself of the safety of his precious manuscript and in some manner to
alleviate, if he could, his growing pain. Even as he lowered himself down
the foVsle companionway a sharp, shrill female cry rang out through the
darkness from the brigantine's direction, followed by another and a third.

"Their turn, now," said someone on the shallop, and a number of the
pirates chuckled. The blood rushed from Ebenezer's brain; he swayed on
the ladderway and found it necessary to pause a moment, his forehead
pressed against an upper rung.

"She's but a whore; a simple whore/' he said to himself, and was obliged
to repeat the words several times before he could proceed with his descent.

Whether because he thought he had put it away for safekeeping before
boarding the Cyprian or because he was too drunk on returning to notice
its absence, Captain Pound did not disclose the loss of the Journal fragment
until after noon of the following day, by which time Ebenezer had found
an even better hiding-place for it. Thinking it imprudent to trust his valet
too far, he had waited until Bertrand went on deck that morning and
had then transferred his prize from under his pallet to a fold in the canvas
of a brand new sail which lay at the bottom of a pile of others on a large
shelf near at hand. Thus when in the afternoon he and Bertrand stripped
to the skin with the rest of the crew and stood by while Boabdil and the
Captain combed the ship, he was not alarmed to see them throw aside the
rag-beds in his cell: for them to unfold and refold every spare sail on the
shelf would have been unthinkable. After a two-hour search failed to dis-
cover the manuscript, Captain Pound concluded that someone from the
Cyprian had sneaked aboard to steal it. All that day and the next the pirates
raced to find the brigantine again, until the sight of Cape Henlopen and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [283]

Delaware Bay put an end to the chase and forced them back to the safety
of the open sea.

His loss made the Captain daily more sour and irascible. His suspicion
naturally fell heaviest on Ebenezer and Bertrand: though he had no reason
to believe that either had prior knowledge of the Journal's presence on the
ship and no evidence that either had stolen it— both had been seen aboard
the Cyprian, for example— he nevertheless confined them to their cell again,
out of ill humor. At the same time he had the Moor lay ten stripes on the
sailmaker's aged back as punishment for failing to see the thief: the flogging
could be heard in the rope-locker, and Ebenezer had to remind himself,
uncomfortably, that the manuscript was exceedingly valuable to the cause
of order and justice in Maryland. To Bertrand, who had nearly swooned
during the search of their quarters, he declared that he had thrown the
Journal into the sea for fear of discovery, and that old Carl was after all a
pirate whom any judge ashore would doubtless hang.

"Nonetheless," he added resolutely, "should I hear they mean to kill or
torture anyone for't, even that loathesome beast Boabdil, I shall confess."
Whether he would in fact,, he did not care to wonder; he made the vow
primarily for Bertrand's sake, to forestall another defection.

"Small difference whether ye do or no," the valet answered, "Our time's
nigh up in either case." He was, indeed, perilously disheartened; from the
first he had been skeptical of Ebenezer's plan to escape, and even that long
chance was precluded by their present confinement. In vain did Ebenezer
point out that it was Bertrand who, by his conduct aboard the Cyprian,
had spoiled their best opportunity to escape: such truths are never con-
solations.

Their prospects darkened as the day of the shallop's scheduled rendez-
vous approached. They heard the crew in the fo'c'sle complain of the
Captain's mounting severity: three had been put on short rations for no
greater crime than that Pound had overheard them comparing notes on
the Cyprian women; a fourth, who as spokesman for the group had in-
quired how soon they would put into some port, had been threatened with
keelhauling. Daily the two prisoners feared that he would take it into his
head to put them to some form of torture. The one bright happenstance of
the entire period, both for the crew and for Ebenezer, was the news that
the Moor, whom they had come to resent for executing the Captain's orders,
had been blessed by one of his victims on the brigantine with a social
disease.

"Whether 'tis French pox or some other, I don't know," said the man

[284] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

who had the news, "but he is sore as a boil oft and cannot walk to save him/'
Ebenezer readily assumed that it was the girl in the mizzen-rigging who
had been infected, for though Boabdil had assuredly not confined his exer-
cise to her, none of the other pirates showed signs of the malady. The
disclosure gave him a complexly qualified pleasure: in the first place he
was glad to see the Moor thus repaid for the rape, yet he quite understood
the oddity of this emotion in the light of his own intentions. Second, the re-
lief he felt at so narrowly escaping contagion himself, like the relief at
having his chastity preserved for him, failed to temper his disappointment as
he thought it should. And third, the presence of infection suggested that the
girl had not been virginal, and this likelihood occasioned in him the follow-
ing additional and not altogether harmonious feelings: chagrin at having
somewhat less cause to loathe the Moor and relish his affliction; disap-
pointment at what he felt to be a depreciation of his own near-conquest;
alarm at the implication of this disappointment,, which seemed to be that
his motives for assaulting the girl were more cruel than even the Moor's,
who would not have assumed her to be virginal in the first place; awe at
the double perversity that though his lust had been engendered at least
partially by pity for what he took to be a deflowered maiden, yet he felt in
his heart that the pity was nonetheless authentic and would have been
heightened, not diminished, during his own attack on her, whereas the
revelation that she had not lost her maidenhead to Boabdil materially
diminished it; and finally, a sort of overarching joy commingled with relief
at a suspicion that seemed more probable every time he reviewed it— the
suspicion that his otherwise not easily accountable possession by desire,
contingent as it had been on the assumption of her late deflowering
and his consequent pity, was by the very perverseness of that contingency
rendered almost innocent, an affair as it were between virgins. This mystic
yearning of the pure to join his ravished sister in impurity: was it not, in
fact, self-ravishment, and hence a variety of love?
'Very likely/' he concluded, and chewed his index fingernail for joy.
How Captain Pound explained his dereliction, the Laureate never
learned. The six weeks ran their course; well after dark on the appointed
day the prisoners heard another ship saluted by the pirates, and the sound
of visitors brought aboard from a longboat. Whatever the nature of the
parley, it was brief: after half an hour the guests departed. All hands were
ordered aloft, and into the rope-locker came the sounds of the pirates mak-
ing sail in the gentle breeze. As soon as the shallop gained steerage-way the
acting first mate— none other than the boatswain impressed from the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 285 ]

Poseidon, who had so rapidly and thoroughly adjusted to his new circum-
stances that Pound appointed him to replace the ailing Moor— climbed
down into the fo'c'sle, unlocked the door of the brig, and ordered the
prisoners on deck.

"Aie!" cried Bertrand. "'Tis the end!"

"What doth this mean?" the Laureate demanded.

"'Tis the end! Tis the end!"

" Tis the end o' thy visit," the boatswain grumbled. "I'll say that much/'

"Thank Heav'n!" Ebenezer cried. "Is't not as I said, Bertrand?"

"Up with ye, now."

"One moment," the poet insisted. "I beg you for a moment alone, sir,
ere I go with you. I must give thanks to my Savior." And without waiting
for reply he fell to his knees in an attitude of prayer.

"Ah, well, then " The boatswain shifted uncertainly, but finally

stepped outside the cell. "Only a moment, though; the Captain's in foul
spirits."

As soon as he was alone Ebenezer snatched the Journal manuscript from
its hiding-place nearby and thrust it into his shirt. Then he joined Bertrand
and the boatswain.

"I am ready, friend, and to this cell bid Adieu right gladly. Is't a boat
hath come for us, or are we so near shore? 'Sblood, how this lifts my heart!"

The boatswain merely grunted and preceded them up the companionway
to the deck, where they found a mild and moonless mid-September night.
The shallop rode quietly under a brilliant canopy of stars. All hands were
congregated amidships, several holding lanterns, and greeted their ap-
proach with a general murmur. Ebenezer thought it only fit that he bid
them farewell with a bit of verse, since all in all they had, save for the past
six weeks, treated him quite unobjectionably: but there was not time to
compose, and all he had in stock, so to speak (his notebook having -been
left behind, to his great sorrow, on the Poseidon) was a little poem of
welcome to Maryland that he had hatched at sea and committed to
memory— unhappily not appropriate to the occasion. He resolved therefore
to content himself with a few simple remarks, no less well turned for their
brevity, the substance of which would be that while he could not approve
of their way of life, he was nonetheless appreciative of their civil regard for
himself and his man. Moreover, he would conclude, what a man cannot
condone he may yet forgive: Many a deed that the head reviles finds
absolution in the heart; and while he could not but insist,, should they ever
be apprehended at their business, that their verdict be just, he could pray

[286] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

nonetheless, and would with his whole heart, that their punishment be
merciful.

But it was not his fortune to deliver himself of these observations, for
immediately upon reaching the gathering he and Bertrand were set upon
by the nearest pirates and held fast by the arms. The group separated into
a double column leading to the larboard rail, from the gangway of which,
illuminated by the flickering lanterns, the prisoners saw a plank run out
some six feet over the sea.

"Nay!" Ebenezer's flesh drew up in goose bumps. "Dear God in
Heav'n!"

Captain Pound was not in sight, but somewhere aft his voice said "On
with't." The grim-faced pirates drew their cutlasses and held them ready;
Ebenezer and Bertrand, at the inboard end of the gauntlet, were faced
toward the plank, released, and at the same moment pricked from behind
with swords or knives to get them moving.

"From the first, gentlemen, I have been uncertain which of you is
Ebenezer Cooke," said Captain Pound. "I know now that the twain of you
are impostors. The real Ebenezer Cooke is in St. Mary's City, and hath
been these several weeks."

"Nay!" cried the poet, and Bertrand howled. But the ranks of steel blades
closed behind them, and they were shortly teetering on the plank. Below
them the black sea raced and rustled down the freeboard; Ebenezer saw it
sparkle in tie flare of the lanterns and fell to his knees, the better to clutch
at the plank. No time for a parting song like that of Arion, whose music had
summoned dolphins to his rescue. In two seconds Bertrand, farther out-
board, lost his balance and fell with a screech into the water.

"Jump!" cried several pirates.

"Shoot him!" others urged.

'TGodI" wailed Ebenezer, and allowed himself to tumble from the plank.

16: THE LAUREATE AND BERTRAND, LEFT TO DROWN,
ASSUME THEIR NICHES IN THE HEAVENLY PANTHEON

FOR BETTER OR WORSE, THE LAUREATE FOUND THE WATER WARM; THE

initial shock of immersion was gone by the time he scrabbled to the surface,
and when he opened his eyes he saw the lights of the shallop's stern,, already

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [287]

some yards distant, slipping steadily away. But despite the moderate
temperature of the water his heart froze. He could scarcely comprehend
his position: uppermost in his mind was not the imminence of death at all,
but that last declaration of Captain Pound's, that the real Ebenezer Cooke
was in St. Mary's City. Another impostor! What marvelous plot, then, was
afoot? There was of course the possibility that Burlinganie, so clever at
disguises, had arrived safely and found it useful to play the poet, the further
to confound Coode. But if he had learned of Ebenezer's capture from
passengers on the Poseidon, as one would suppose, surely he understood
that assuming his identity would jeopardize his friend's life; and if instead
he believed his ward and prot£g6 dead, it was hard to imagine him having
the heart for imposture. No, more likely it was Coode himself who was
responsible. And to what evil purpose would his name be turned? Ebenezer
shuddered to think. He kicked off his shoes, the better to stay afloat; the
precious manuscript too he reluctantly cast away, and began treading water
as gently as possible so as to conserve his strength.

But for what? The hopelessness of his circumstances began to make itself
clear. Already the shallop's lights were small in the distance, obscured by
every wave; soon they would be gone entirely, and there were no other
lights. For all he knew he was in mid-Atlantic; certainly he was scores of
miles from land, and the odds against another ship's passing even within
sight by daylight were so great as to be unthinkable. Moreover, the night
was young: there could be no fewer than eight hours before dawn, and
though the seas were not rough, he could scarcely hope to survive that
long.

"I'faith, I am going to die!" he exclaimed to himself. "There is no other
possibility!"

This was a thing he had often pondered. Always, in fact— ever since his
boyhood days in St. Giles, when he and Anna played at saints and Caesars
or Henry read them stories of the past— he had been fascinated by the aspect
of death. How must the cutpurse feel, or the murderer, when he mounts the
stairway to the gibbet? The falling climber, when he sees the rock that
will dash out brains and bowels? In the night, between their bedchambers,
he and his sister had examined eveiy form of death they knew of and
compared their particular pains and horrors. They had even experimented
with death: once they pressed the point of a letter knife into their breasts as
hard as they dared, but neither had had the courage to draw blood; another
time each had tried being throttled by the other, to see who could go the
farthest without crying out, But the best game of all was to see who could

[ 288 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

hold his breath longer; to see, specifically, whether either was brave enough
to hold it to the point of unconsciousness. Neither had ever reached that
goal, but competition carried their efforts to surprising lengths: they would
grow mottled, their eyes would bulge, their jaws clench, and finally would
come the desperate explosion of breath that left them weak. There was a
terrible excitement about this game; no other came so close to the feel of
death, especially if in the last frantic moments one imagined himself buried
alive, drowning, or otherwise unable to respire at will. That speculation
made one wild; the breath roared out. It was a sport too moving, too up-
setting, to play often.

It is not surprising, therefore, that however unparalleled in his experience,
Ebenezer's present straits were by no means novel to his imagination.
Death by drowning was a consideration intimately bound up with the
breath-holding game, one they had several times explored. Even the details
of stepping from the plank at night, clawing from the depths for air, and
watching the stern lights slip away they had considered, and Ebenezer al-
most knew ahead of time how tie end would feel: water catching the
throat and stinging the nose, the convulsive coughing to expel it, and the
inevitable reinspiration of air where no air was,, the suck of water into
the lungs; then vertigo, the monstrous pressure in head and chest, and
worst of all the frenzy, the anxiety of the body not to die, that total
mindless lust for air which must in the last seconds rend body and soul
unspeakably. When he and Anna chose their deaths, drowning— along with
burning, slow crushing, and similar protracted agonies— was disqualified at
once, and the news that anyone had actually suffered such an end would
thrill them to the point of dizziness. But in his heart the fact of death and
all these senuous anticipations were to Ebenezer like the facts of life and the
facts of history and geography, which, owing to his education and natural
proclivities, he looked at always from the storyteller's point of view: notion-
ally he admitted its finality; vicariously he sported with its horror; but never,
never could he redly embrace either. That lives are stories, he assumed;
that stories end, he allowed— how else could one begin another? But that

the storyteller himself must live a particular tale and die Unthinkable!

Unthinkable!

Even now, when he saw not the slightest grounds for hope and knew
that the dread two minutes must be on him soon, his despair was as notional,
his horror as vicarious, as if he were in his chamber in St. Giles playing the
dying-game, or acting out a story in the summ^rhouse. Bertiand, he as-
sumed with some envy, had strangled on his water and was done with it;

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 289 ]

there was no reason why he himself should not get it over with at once.
But it was not simply fear that kept him paddling; it was also the same
constitutional deficiency that had made him unable to draw his own blood,
will himself unconscious, or acknowledge in his heart that there really had
been a Roman Empire. The shallop was gone. Nothing was to be seen
except the stars, or heard except the chuckle of water around his neck, yet
his spirit was almost calm.

Presently he heard a thrashing in the sea nearby; his heart pounded. " Tis
a shark!" he thought, and envied Bertrand more than ever. Here was some-
thing that had not occurred to him! Why had he not drowned himself at
once? The thing splashed nearer; another wave and they were in the same
trough. Even as Ebenezer struck out in the opposite direction, his left leg
brushed against the monster.

"Aief he shrieked, and "Nay!" cried the other, equally alarmed.

"Dear God!" said Ebenezer, paddling back. "Is't you, Bertrand?"

"Master Eben! Praise be, I thought 'twas a sea-serpent! Thou'rt not
drowned?"

They embraced each other and came up sputtering.

"Get on with't, or we shall be yet!" the poet said, as happy as though his
valet had brought a boat. Bertrand observed that it was but a matter of time
after all, and Ebenezer replied with feeling that death was not so terrible
in company as alone.

"What say you/' he proposed, in the same spirit wherewith he had used
to propose the breath-game to Anna: "shall we have done with't now, to-
gether?"

"In any case 'twill not be many minutes," Bertrand said. "My muscles
fail me already."

"Look yonder, how the stars are darkened out." Ebenezer pointed to a
lightless stretch on the western horizon. "At least we'll not need to weather
that storm."

"Not I, 'tis certain." The valet's breath came hard from the exertion of
paddling. "Another minute and I'm done."

"Howe'er you've injured me before, friend, I forgive you. We'll go to-
gether."

"Ere the moment comes," Bertrand panted, "I've a thing to say, sir "

"Not sir/" cried the poet. "Think you the sea cares who's master and
man?"

"—'tis about my gambling on the Poseidon" Bertrand continued.

[ 2QO ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Long since forgiven! You lost my money: I pray you had good use oft!
What need have I of money now?"

"There's more, sir. You recall the Parson Tubman offered odds "

"Forgiven! What more's to lose, when you had plucked me clean?"

But Bertrand would not be consoled. "What a wretch I felt, sir! I
answered to your name, ate at your place, claimed the honors of your
post "

"Speak no more oft!"

"Methought Tis he should tumble Lucy on these sheets, not I, and then
I lost your forty pound as well! And you, sir, in a hammock in the fo'c'sle,
suffering in my place!"

" Tis over and done," Ebenezer said kindly.

"Hear me out, sir! When that fearful storm was done and we were
westering, I vowed to myself I'd have ye back that money and more, to pay
ye for your hardship. The Parson had got up a new swindle on raising the
Virginia Capes, and I took a notion to woo Miss Lucy privily to my cause.
Then we would fleece the fleecer!"

" 'Tis a charitable resolve, but you'd naught to use for stakes "

"Nor did some others that had been gulled," Bertrand replied. "They
threatened to take a stick to Tubman for all he was a cleric. But he smelled
what was in the wind, and gave 'em a chance to bet again on Maryland.
They'd but to pledge some property or other "

"I'faith!" cried Ebenezer. "His cassock frocked a very Jew!"

"He had the papers drawn like any lawyer: we'd but to sign, and we
could wager to the value of the property."

"You signed a pledge?" Ebenezer asked incredulously.

"Aye, sir."

"Dear God! To what?"

"To Maiden, sir. I "

"To Maiden!" Such was the poet's amazement he forgot to paddle, and
the next wave covered his head. When he could speak again he demanded,
"Yet surely 'twas no more than a pound or two?"

"I shan't conceal it, sir; 'twas rather more."

"Ten pounds, then? Twenty? Ha, out with't, fellow! What's forty pounds
more to a drowning man? What is't to me if you lost a hundred?"

"My very thought, sir," Bertrand said faintly; his strength was almost
gone. "'Twas e'en for that I told ye, now we're drowning men. Lookee
how the dark comes closer! Methinks I hear the sea rising yonder, too,
but I shan't be here to feel the rain. Farewell, sir."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 291 ]

"Wait!" Ebenezer cried, and clutched his servant by one arm to help
support him.

'Tin done, sir; let me go/'

"And I, Bertrand; I shall go with thee! Was't two hundred you lost,
pray?"

" Twas but a pledge, sir/' Bertrand said. "Who's to say I lost a farthing?
For aught I know thou'rt a wealthy man this moment."

"What did you pledge, man? Three hundred pounds?"

Bertrand had stopped treading water and would have gone under had
not Ebenezer, paddling furiously, held him up with one hand by the shirt
front.

"What doth it matter, sir? I pledged it all,"

"AZZ/"

"The grounds, the manor, the sot-weed in the storehouse— Tubman holds
it all."

"Pledged my legacy!"

"Prithee let me drown, sir, if ye won't yourself."

"I shall!" said Ebenezer. "Sweet Maiden gone? Then farewell, and God
forgive you!"

"Farewell, sir!"

"Stay, I am with thee yet!" Master and man embraced each other. "Fare-
well! Farewell!"

"Farewell!" Bertrand cried again, and they went under. Immediately both
fought free and struggled up for air.

"This will not do!" Ebenezer gasped. "Farewell!"

"Farewell!" said Bertrand. Again they embraced and went under, and
again fought free.

"I cannot do't," said Bertrand, "though my muscles scarce can move,
they bring me up." .

"Adieu, then," said the poet grimly. "Thy confession gives me strength
to die alone. Farewell!"

"Farewell!"

As before, Ebenezer automatically took a deep breath before sinking
and so could not do more than put his face under. This time, however,
his mind was made up: he blew out the air, bade the world a last farewell*
and sank in earnest.

A moment later he was up again, but for a different reason.

"The bottom! I felt the bottom, Bertrand! Tis not two fathom deep!"

"Nay!" gasped the valet, who had been near submerged himself. "How

[2Q2] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

can that be, in the middle of the ocean? Haply 'twas a whale or other
monster."

"'Twas hard sand bottom!" Ebenezer insisted. He went below again,
this time fearlessly, and from a depth of no more than eight feet brought
up a fistful of sand for proof.

"Belike a shoal, then," Bertrand said, unimpressed. "As well forty
fathom as two; we can't stand up in either. Farewell!"

"Wait! Tis no cloud yonder, man, but an ocean isle we've washed to!
Those are her cliffs that hide the stars; that sound is the surf against her
coast!"

"I cannot reach it."

"You can! 'Tis not two hundred yards to shore, and less to a standing
place!" Fearing for his own endurance, he waited no longer for his man
to be persuaded, but struck out westwards for the starless sky, and soon
heard Bertrand panting and splashing behind. With every stroke his con-
jecture seemed more likely; the sound of gentle surf grew distant and rec-
ognizable, and the dark outline defined itself more sharply.

"If not an isle, at least 'twill be a rock," he called over his shoulder,
"and we can wait for passing ships."

After a hundred yards they could swim no farther; happily, Ebenezer
found that by standing on tiptoe he could just clear the surface with his
chin.

'Very well for you, that are so tall," lamented Bertrand, "but I must
perish here in sight of land!"

Ebenezer, however, would hear of no such thing: he instructed the valet
to float along behind him, hands on the poet's shoulders for support. It
was tedious going, especially for Ebenezer, only the balk of whose feet
were on the bottom: the weight behind pulled him off balance at every
step, and though Bertrand rode clear, his weight held Ebenezer at a con-
stant depth, so that only between waves could he catch his breath. The
manner of their progress was thus: in each trough Ebenezer secured his
footing and drew a breath; when the wave came he stroked with both arms
from his breast and, with his head under, rode perhaps two feet— one of
which would be lost in the slight undertow before he regained his footing.
Half an hour, during which they covered no more than forty or fifty feet,
was enough to exhaust his strength, but by then the water was just shallow
enough for the valet to stand as well. It required another thirty minutes
to drag themselves over the remaining distance: had there been breakers
they might yet have drowned, but the waves w^re never more than two

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [293l

feet high, and oftener less than one. At last they reached a pebbly beach
and, too fatigued for words, crawled on all fours to the base of the nearby
cliff, where they lay some while as if a-swoon.

Presently, however, despite the mildness of the night and the protection
provided by the cliff against the westerly breeze, they found their resting-
place too cold for comfort and had to search for better shelter until their
clothes were dry. They made their way northward along the beach and
were fortunate enough to find not far away a place where the high sand-
stone was cut by a wooded ravine debouching onto the shore. Here tall
wheatlike weeds grew between the scrub pines and bayberries; the castaways
curled together like animals in a nest and knew no more till after dawn.

It was the sand fleas that roused them at last: scores of sand fleas hopped
and crawled all over them— attracted, luckily, not by hunger but by the
warmth of their bodies— and tickled them awake.

Ebenezer jumped up and looked unbelievingly about. "Dear God!" he
laughed. "I had forgot!"

Bertrand too stood up, and the sand fleas— not really parasites at all-
hopped madly in search of cover.

"And I," he said, hoarse from exposure. "I dreamt I was in London with
my Betsy. God pox those vermin for waking me!"

"But we're alive, at that. Tis more than anyone expected."

"Thanks to you, sir!" Bertrand fell to his knees before the poet. "'Tis
a Catholic saint that saves the man who ruined him!"

"Make me no saint today," Ebenezer said, "or you'll have me a Jesuit
tomorrow." But he was flattered nonetheless. "No doubt I had better
drowned when Father hears the news!"

Bertrand clasped his hands together. "Many's the wrong I've done ye,
sir, that I'll pay in Hell for, anon— nor shall I want company in the fire.
But I vow ye a vow this instant I'm your slave fore'er, to do with as ye
will, and should we e'er be rescued off this island I shall give my life to
gaining back your loss."

The Laureate, embarrassed by these protestations, replied, "I dare not
ask it, lest you pledge my soul!" and proposed an immediate search for food.
The day was bright, and warm for mid-September; they were chilled
through from exposure, and upon brushing the sand from themselves
found their joints stiff and every muscle sore from the past night's labors.
But their clothes were dry except for the side on which they'd slept, and a
little stamping of feet and swinging of arms was enough to start the warm
blood coursing. They were without hats, wigs, or shoes, but otherwise ade-

[294] TEDE SOT-WEED FACTOR

quately clothed in the sturdy garb of seamen. Food, however, they had to
find, though Ebenezer longed to explore the island at once: their stomachs
rumbled, and they had not much strength. To cook their meal was no
great problem: Bertrand had with him the little tinderbox he carried in
his pocket for smoking purposes, and though the tinder itself was damp,
the flint and steel were as good as new, and the beach afforded drift-
wood and dry seaweed. Finding something to cook was another matter.
The woods no doubt abounded with small game; gulls, kingfishers, rails,
and sandpipers soared and flitted along the beach; and there were certainly
fish to be caught in the shallows; but they had no implements to hunt with.

Bertrand despaired afresh. " 'Tis a passing cruel prank fate plays us, to
trade a quick death for a slow!" And despite his recent gratitude, the surli-
ness with which he rejected various proposals for improvising weapons be-
trayed a certain resentment toward Ebenezer for having saved him. Indeed,
he shortly abandoned as hopeless the search for meaiis and went to gather
firewood, declaring his intention to starve at least in relative comfort. Eben-
ezer, left to his own resources, resolved to walk some distance down the
beach, hoping to find inspiration along the way.

It was a long beach. In fact, the island appeared to be of considerable
size, for though the shoreline curved out of sight in both directions, its
reappearance farther south suggested a cove or bay, perhaps a succession
pf them; one could not locate the actual curve of the island's perimeter.
Of its body nothing could be seen except the line of stratified cliffs, caved
by the sea and weathered to various browns and oranges, and the edge
trees of the forest that ran back from the precipice— some with half their
roots exposed, some already fallen the sixty or a hundred feet to the beach
and polished like pewter by salt air and sand. If one scaled those cliffs,
what wonders might one see?

Ebenezer had been at sea nearly half a year in all, yet never had he seen
it so calm. There was no ground swell at alh only catspaws riffling here
and there, and laps of waves not two hands high. As he walked he no-
ticed minnows darting in the shallows and schools of white perch flipping
and rippling a few feet out. Crabs, as well, of a sort he had never seen,
slid sideways out to safety as he approached; in the water their shells were
olive against the yellow sand, but the carapaces he found along the beach
were cooked a reddish-orange by the sun.

'Would God I had a net!"

Arpund a bend just past the place where they had crawled ashore he
saw a startling sight— all along the foreshore, below the line of weed and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 295 1

driftwood that marked high tide, were sheets of white paper; others rolled
and curled in the rim of the sea. The thought that there might be people
on the island made his face burn, not entirely with joy— in fact, it was a
curious relief he felt, small but undeniable, when the papers proved to be
the tale of Hicktopeake, Laughing King of Accomack; but he could not
as yet say plainly what it was that relieved him. He gathered all the pages
he could find, though the ink had run so that only an occasional word
was legible; they would, when dry, be good for lighting fires.

He started back with them, thinking idly of John Smith's adventures.
Did this curious pleasure stem from the fact that he, like Smith, was in
terra incognita, or was there more to it? He hoped they would find no
Indians, at least, like the fearsome fellows Smith had found spearing fish
along the shore. . . .

" 'Sheart!" he cried aloud, and kissed the wondrous Journal.

An hour later their dinner was on the fire: seven respectable perch, half
a foot long after cleaning, roasted on a green laurel turnspit, and on a thin
piece of shale such as could be picked up anywhere along the cliffs, four
crabs, frankly an experiment, fried in their natural juices. The hard-shelled
ones could not be speared, but in pursuit of them Bertrand had found
these others— similar in appearance but with shells soft as Spanish kid-
brooding in clumps of sea-grass near the shore. Nor did they want for water;
in a dozen places along the base of the cliff Ebenezer had found natural
springs issuing from what looked like layers of hard clay, whence they ran
seawards across the beach on the beds of softer clay one encountered every
few hundred feet. One had, indeed, to take care in approaching these springs,
for the clay beds were slippery and in places treacherously soft,, as Ebenezer
learned: without warning one could plunge knee-deep into what looked
rock-hard on the surface. But the water was clean and sweet from filtering
through the stone, and so cold it stung the teeth.

To get full benefit of the sun they did their cooking on the beach.
Bertrand, humbled anew by his master's inspiration, attended the meal;,
Ebenezer made use of a fallen tree nearby for a back rest and was content
to chew upon a reed and regard the sputtering crabs.

"Where do ye fancy we are?" inquired the valet, whose curiosity had
returned with his good spirits.

"God knows!" the poet said cheerfully. " 'Tis some Atlantic isle, that's
sure, and belike not giv'n on the charts, else I doubt me Pound would
choose the spot to plank us."

[ 296 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

This conjecture pleased the valet mightily. "I have heard tell of the
Fortunate Islands, sir; old Twigg at St. Giles was wont to speak of 'em
whene'er her gout was paining."

"Well I recall it!" Ebenezer laughed "Didn't I hear from the cradle
how she stood watch all the voyage from Maryland, hoping for a sight
of them?"

"Think ye this is the place?"

Tfaith, 'tis fair enough," the poet granted. "But the ocean swarms with
isles that man knows naught of. How maijy times dear Anna and I have
pled with Burlingame to tell of them— Grocland, Helluland, Stokafixa, and
the rest! How many fond hours I've pored over Zeno the Venetian, Peter
Martyr d'Anghiera, and good Hakluyt's books of voyages! E'en at Cam-
bridge, when I had better done other things, I spent whole evenings over
ancient maps and manuscripts. 'Twas there at Magdalene, in the antique
Book of Lismore, I saw described the Fortunate Islands dear old Mrs.
Twigg yearned for, and read how St. Brendan found them. 'Twas there
I learned of Markland, too, the wooded isle; and Frisland and Icaria.
Who knows which this might be? Haply 'tis Atlantis risen from the sea,
or the Sunken Land of Buss old Frobisher found; haply 'tis Bra, whose
women have much pain in bearing children, or magic Daculi, the cradle
island, where they go for gentler labor."

"It matters naught to me," said Bertrand, "so we be not killed by salvages.
Tis a thing I've feared for since we stepped ashore. Did ye read what
manner of husbands the wenches have?"

"I've shared your fear," Ebenezer admitted. "Some isles are bare of men;
others, like famed Cibola, boast wondrous cities. Some are like Estotiland,
whose folk are versed in every art and read from books in Latin; some
others are like her neighbor Drogio, where Zeno says the salvages eat
their captives."

"Pray Heav'n this is not Drogio!"

"We shall climb to the cliff top when we've eaten," Ebenezer said "If
I can see the island whole, I may be able to name it." He went on to
explain that, while the location and size of islands varied widely from map
to map, there was some agreement among cartographers as to their shape.
"If 'tis in the form of a great crescent, for example, 'twill of necessity be
Mayda; if a small one, 'tis doubtless Tanmare, that Peter Martyr spoke of.
A large parallelogram would be Antillia; a smaller one Salvagio. A simple
rectangle we shall know for Ilia Verde, and a pentagon for Reylla. If we
find this isle to be a perfect circle, we must look farther for its inland

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 297 ]

features: if 'tis cut in twain by a river we shall know it for Brazil, but if in-
stead 'tis a kind of ring or annulus about an inland lake, the which hath
sundry islets of its own, then Heav'n hath smiled on us as ne'er on Coro-
nado, for 'twill be Cibola, the Isle of the Seven Golden Cities!"

" 'Sheart, may we find it so!" said Bertrand, turning the fish to brown.
"Twere not like folk in a golden city to eat up strangers, d'ye think?"

"Nay, 'tis more likely they'll take us for gods and grant our every
pleasure," Ebenezer declared. "Such was the luck of stout Cortez among
the Aztecs, that had a town of gold: e'en the Emperor Montezuma bowed
to him"

"Marry, I hope and pray 'tis the Isle of Seven Cities, then; I shall have
three and you the rest, to make up for losing Maiden! Doth the book say
aught of the women in these towns, whether they be fat or thin, or fair
of face?"

"Naught that I can recall," the poet replied.

"I'God, let us make short work of these fish, sir!" Bertrand urged, sliding
them from the laurel spit to the clean-washed slates they had found to eat
from. "I cannot wait to see my golden towns!"

"Be not o'erhasty, now; this may not be Cibola after all. For aught we
know it may lie in the shape of a human hand, in which case our goose
is cooked: Hand-of-Satan hath such a shape, and 'tis one of the InsuLae
Demonium—the demons' isles."

This final possibility chastened them sufficiently to do full justice to the
perch and soft crabs, which they seasoned with hunger, ate with their fingers,
and washed down with clamshellfuls of cold spring water. Then they
stuffed an extra soft crab each into their pockets, grease and all, and climbed
through the ravine to the top of the cliff, whence to their chagrin
they could see no more than open water on one side of them and trees
on the other. The sun was still but forty-five degrees above the eastern
horizon; there was time for some hours of exploration before they need
think of dinner and a shelter for the night.

"What course do ye propose, sir?" Bertrand asked.

"I have a plan," said Ebenezer. "But ere I tell it, what course do you
propose?"

" Tis not for me to say, sir. I'll own I have spoken out of turn befot^
but that's behind me. Ye have saved my life and forgiven the harm I've
done ye; I'll dance to any tune ye call."

Ebenezer acknowledged the propriety of these sentiments, but took issue
with them nevertheless. "We are cast here on some God-forsaken isle," he

[ 298 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

said, "remote from the world of bob-wig and dildo. What sense here hath
the title Poet Laureate, or the labels man and master? Thou'rt one man,
I another, and there's an end on't."

Bertrand considered this for a moment. "I confess I have my preferences,"
he said. "If 'twere mine to decide, I'd strike out inland with all haste. Haply
we'll find one or two golden cities ere dinnertime."

"We've no certain knowledge this is the Isle of Seven Cities/' Ebenezer
reminded him, "nor do I relish walking overland without shoes. What I
propose is that we walk along the shore to learn the length and shape of
the island. Haply 'twill identify our find, or show us what manner of people
live here, if any. Nay, more, we've paper aplenty here, and charcoal sticks
to mark with: we can count our paces to every turn and draw a map as we

go"

"That's so," the valet admitted. "But 'twould mean another meal of fish
and soft crabs and another night upon the ground. If we make haste in-
land, haply 'tis golden plates we'll eat from, and sleep in a golden bed,
by Heav'n!" His voice grew feverish. "Just fancy us a pair of bloody gods,
sir! Wouldn't we get us godlets on their maiden girls and pass the plate
come Sunday? Tis a better post than Baltimore's paltry sainthood,
b'm'faith! I'd not trade places with the Pope!"

"All that may happen yet," Ebenezer said. "On the other hand we
might encounter monsters, or salvage Indians that will eat us for dinner.
Methinks 'twere wise to scout around somewhat, to get the lay of the land:
what do a few days matter to an immortal god?"

The prudence of this plan was undeniable; reluctant as he was to post-
pone for even a day the joys of being a deity, Bertrand had no mind to
be a meal for either cannibals or dragons— both of whose existence he might
have been skeptical of in London, but not here—and so agreed to it readily,
if not enthusiastically. They made their way down to the beach again,
marked their point of departure with a stake to which was tied a strip of
rag from Bertrand's shirt, and struck out northward along the shore, Eben-
ezer counting paces as they walked.

He had not reached two hundred when Bertrand caugjit his arm.

"Hark!" he whispered. "Listen yonder!"

They stood still. From behind a fallen tree not far ahead, a hackle-
raising sound came down on the breeze: it was half a moan, half a tuneless
chant, lugubrious and wild,

"Let us flee!" Bertrand whispered. "'Tis one of those monsters^"

"Nay," Ebenezer said, his skin a-prickle. "That is no beast."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 299 ]

"A hungry salvage, then; come on!"

The cry floated down to them again.

"Methinks 'tis the sound of pain, not of hunger, Bertrand. Some wight
lies hurt by yonder log/'

"God save him, then!" the valet cried. "If we go near, his friends will
leap us from behind and make a meal of us."

"You'll give up your post so lightly?" Ebenezer teased, "What sort of
god are you, that will not aid his votaries?"

A third time came the pitiable sound, and though the valet stood too
terrified to move, Ebenezer approached the fallen tree and peered over
it. A naked black man lay there on the sand, face down, his wrists and ankles
bound; his back was striped with the healed scars of many floggings, and
from myriad cuts and scratches on his legs he bled upon the sand. He was
a tall, well-muscled man in the prime of life, but obviously exhausted; his
skin was wet, and a spotty trail of blood ran from where he lay to the
water's edge. Even as Ebenezer watched him from above, unobserved, he
lifted his head with a mighty effort and resumed the woeful incantation,
chanting in a savage-sounding tongue.

"Come hither!" the poet called to Bertrand, and scrambled over the log.
The Negro wrenched over on his side and shrank against the tree trunk,
regarding the newcomer wildly. He was a prepossessing fellow with high
cheekbones and forehead, massive browbones over his great white eyes, a
nose splayed flat against his face, and a scalp shaved nearly bald and
scarified— like his cheeks, forehead, and upper arms— in strange designs.

"God in Heaven!" Bertrand cried on seeing him. The black man's eyes
rolled in his direction. " 'Tis a regular salvage!"

"His hands are bound behind him, and he's hurt from crawling over the
stones."

"Run, then! He'll ne'er catch up with us!"

"On the contrary," said the Laureate, and turning to the black man he
said loudly and distinctly, "Let-me*untie~the-ropes."

His answer was a string of exotic gibberish; the black man clearly ex-
pected them to kill him momently.

"Nay, nay," Ebenezer protested.

"Prithee do not do't, sir!" said Bertrand. "The wretch will leap on ye
the minute he's free! Think ye these salvages know aught of gratitude?"

Ebenezer shrugged. "They could know no less oft than some others.
Hath he not been thrown, like us, into the sea to die and made his way
by main strength to this shore? I-am4he-Poet-Laureate-of-Maryland" he

[ 300 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

declared to the black man; "I-will-not-harm-you" To illustrate he bran-
dished a stick as though to strike with it, but snapped it over his knee
instead and flung it away, shaking his head and smiling. He pointed to
Bertrand and himself, flung his arm cordially about the valet's shoulders
and said "This-man^nd-I-are-friends. You"— he pointed to all three in turn
— "shall-be-our-friend'OS'-well"

The man seemed still to be fearful, but his eyes showed more suspicion
now than dread. When Ebenezer forcibly moved behind him to release
his hands and Bertrand, at his master's insistence, reluctantly went to work
on the ropes that bound his feet, the fellow whimpered.

Ebenezer patted his shoulder. "Have no fear, friend/'

It took some labor to undo the ropes, for the knots were swollen from
the water and pulled tight by the captive's exertions.

"Whose prisoner do ye take him for?" asked Bertrand. "My guess is, he's
one of those human sacrifices ye told me of, that the folk in golden cities
use in lieu of money on the Sabbath."

"That may well be," the poet agreed. "His captors must in sooth be
clever men, and no mere salvages, else they ne'er could make such fine
stout rope or tie such wondrous hitches in't. Haply they were ferrying him
to the slaughter when he escaped; or belike 'twas some sea-god he was
meant for. Confound these knots!"

"In any case," said Bertrand, "'twill scarcely please 'em to learn we set
him loose. 'Tis like stealing from the collection plate in church."

"They need not know oft. Besides, we are their rightful gods, are we
not? What we do with our offerings is our own affair."

This last, to be sure, he spoke in jest. They loosened the final knots and
retreated a few paces for safety's sake, not certain what the man would
do.

"We'll run in different directions," Ebenezer said. "When he takes out
after one, the other will pursue him from behind."

The black shook off the loosened bonds, still looking warily about, and
rose with difficulty to his feet. Then, as if realizing that he was free, he
stretched his limbs, grinned mightily, raised his arms to the sun, and de-
livered a brief harangue in its direction, interspersing his address with
gestures in their direction.

"Look at the size of him!" Bertrand marveled. "Not e'en Boabdil was
so made!"

Ebenezer frowned at mention of the Moor. "Methinks he's speaking to
the sun now; belike 'tis a prayer of thanks."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ JO1 ]

"He is a very percheron stud!"

Then, to their considerable discomfort, the fellow ended his speech and
turned to face them; even took a step towards them.

"Run!" cried Bertrand.

But no violence was offered them; instead, the black prostrated him-
self at their feet and with muttered reverences embraced their ankles each
in turn; nor would he rise when done, but knelt with forehead on the
sand.

"'Sbody, sir! What doth this signify?"

"I would not say for certain," Ebenezer , replied, "but it seems to me
you have what erst you wished: This wight hath bid his farewells to the
sun and taken us for his gods,"

And so indeed it seemed; the man moved not a muscle, but remained
in his attitude of worship, clearly awaiting his benefactors' pleasure.

"Ffaith," the valet said uncomfortably. "We did not ask for this! What
in Heav'n would he have us do?"

"Who knows?" the poet answered. "I never was a god till now. We gave
him his life, and so he's ours to bless or bastinado, I suppose." He sighed.
"In any case let's bid him rise ere he takes a backache: no god keeps men
upon their knees forever."

17: THE LAUREATE MEETS THE ANACOSTIN KING
AND LEARNS THE TRUE NAME OF HIS OCEAN ISLE

'ONE THING IS CERTAIN," EBENEZER SAID, WHEN THEY RESUMED THEIR

exploration of the beach: "we must demand obedience of this fellow, if
we're to be his deities. That is the clearest common attribute of gods, for
one thing, and the safest policy besides: he may slay the twain of us if he
learns we're mortal."

They had raised the black man up and bade him wash his wounds, which
happily were no worse than scratches from the shells, and had moreover
presented him with the extra soft crabs— cold and linty from their pockets,
but edible nonetheless— and stood by while he made short work of them.
Their charity provoked a fresh display of prostrate gratitude, which acknowl-
edged, they had squatted with him some while on the sand and tried by

[ £02 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

words, gestures, and pictures drawn with sticks to hold converse. What was
the name of the island? Ebenezer had asked him. What was his name?
Where was his town? Who had bound his limbs and flung him into the
sea, and for what cause? And Bertrand, not to be outdone, had added
queries of his own: How distant from where they sat was the first of the
golden cities? What sort of false gods had its citizens, and were the ladies
dark or fair?

But though the black man had heard their inquiries with worshipful
attention, his eyes had shown more love than understanding; all they could
get from him was his name, which— though it was doubtless from no civi-
lized tongue at all— sounded variously to Ebenezer like Drehpunkter,
Dreipunkter, Dreckpdchter, Drogueptcheur, Droitpacteur, Drupegre,
Drfcheporteur, or even Despartidor, and to Bertrand invariably like
Drdkepecker. For that matter it may have been not his name at all but
some savage call to worship, since every time they said the word he made
a genuflection.

"What shall we do with him?" Bertrand asked. "He shows no mind to
go about his business."

"So be't," Ebenezer replied. "Let him help with ours, then. Tis readi-
ness to take orders that makes the subject, and readiness to give them that
makes the lord. Besides, if we set him labors enough he can plot us no
mischief."

They resolved^ therefore, to let the big black man accompany them as
food- and wood-gatherer, cook, and general factotum; indeed, they were
given little choice, for he clearly had no intention of leaving and could if
angered have destroyed them both in half a minute. The three set out
northward once again, Ebenezer and Bertrand in the lead and Drake-
pecker a respectful pace or two behind. For an hour or more they trudged
over pebbles, soft sand, and beds of red, blue, and egg-white clay, always
with the steep unbroken cliff-face on their left and the strangely placid
ocean on their right; every turn Bertrand expected to discover a golden
city, but it would reveal instead only a small cove or other indentation
of the shoreline, which in the main ran still directly north. Then, leg weary
and footsore, they stopped to rest beneath the mouth of a natural cave
some ten or twelve feet up on the cliff wall. The savage, to whom Ebenezer
had entrusted the rude spear with which he'd caught their breakfast, in-
dicated by brandishing it and rubbing his stomach a desire to forage for
dinner; upon receiving permission he scrambled like a monkey up the rock-
face and disappeared.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 303 ]

Bertrand watched him go and sighed. " Tis the last we'll see of Drake-
pecker; and good riddance, says I."

"What!" Ebenezer smiled. "Thou'rt so soon tired of being God?"

The valet admitted that he was. "I had rather do the work myself than
lord it o'er so fearsome a wight as he. This very minute he might be plotting
to spit the twain of us on his spear and fry us up for's dinner!"

"I think not," said the poet. "He likes to serve us."

"Ah, sir, no man enjoys his bondage! Think you there' d be a servant
in the world, if each man had his choice? Tis ill luck, force, and penury
that make some men serve others; all three are galling masters."

"What then of habit, and natural predilection?" teased Ebenezer. "Some
men are born to serve."

Bertrand considered these for a moment and then said, "Habit's no first
cause, but a child of bleak necessity, is't not? Our legs grew calloused to
the pirates' shackles, but we wished them off us nonetheless. As for this
natural bent to slavery, 'tis a tale hatched by the masters: no slave believes
it."

"A moment past you spoke of doing the chores thyself," Ebenezer said,
"but never a word of me doing them; yet 'twas I proposed we forget our
former stations, since the wilderness knows naught of classes."

Bertrand laughed. "Then to my list of yokes add obligation; he's no more
mild a master."

"Call him gratitude or love instead," said Ebenezer, "and watch how
men rejoice in their indenture! This Drakepecker, as you call him, chose his
present bondage when we set him free of a worse, and he may end it by
his own leave when he lists. Therefore I fear him not, and look to have
him serve us many a day." He then asked the valet how he proposed to
lord it over an entire city alone, if one subject shared between them scared
him so.

"'Tis god I want to be, not king," the valet said. "Let others give
and take commands, or lead and put down mutinies; I'll stock me a temple
with food and drink and sleep all morning in my golden bed! Ten young
priestesses I'll have for company, that shall hear confessions and say the
prayers in church, and a brace of great eunuchs to take collection and
guard the money."

"Sloth and viciousness!"

"Would ye not do the same, or any wight else? Who wants the chore
of ruling? 'Tis the crown men lust for, not the scepter."

"Who weto the one must wield the other," Ebenezer answered* "The

[ 304 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

man men bow to is lead sheep in a running flock, that must set their pace
or perish."

"Ye'll rule, then, in your city?" Bertrand wanted to know.

"Aye," said Ebenezer. They were sitting side by side, their backs against
the cliff, gazing idly out to sea. "And what a government would I establish!
Twould be an anti-Platonist republic/'

"I .should hope, sir! What need have you of the Pope, when thou'rt the
god?"

"Nay, Bertrand. This Plato spoke of a nation ruled by philosophers, to
which no poets might be admitted save those that sing the praises of the
government. There is an antique quarrel 'twixt poet and sage."

"Marry, as for that," Bertrand said, "'tis little different from England
or any place else; no prudent king would let a poet attack him. Why did
Lord Baltimore employ ye, if not to sing the praises of his government,
or John Coode work your ruin, if not to squelch the poem? Why, this
wondrous place ye speak of could as well be Maryland!"

"You miss my point," Ebenezer said uncomfortably. "To forbid a sub-
ject for verse is one thing; to prescribe, another. In my town philosophers
will all be welcome— so long as they do not start insurrections— but a poet
shall be their god, and a poet their king, and poets all their councillors:
'twill be a poetacracyl Methinks 'twas this Sir William Davenant had in's
mind, what time he sailed in vain to govern Maryland. The poet-king,
Bertrand-'tis a thought to conjure with! Nor fc't folly, I swear: who better
reads the hearts of men, philosopher or poet? Which is in closer harmony
with the world?" .

He had more to say to Bertrand on the subject, which had been stewing
all the morning in his fancy, but at this instant a pair of savages fell,
as it were, out of the blue and stood before them, spears in hand. They
were half-grown boys, no more than ten or twelve years old, dressed in
matchcoats and deerskin trousers; their skin was not brown-black like Drake-
pecker g but copper-brown, the color of the cliffs, and their hair, so far from
being short and woolly, fell straight and black below their shoulders They
put on the fiercest look they could manage and aimed their spears at the
white men. Bertrand shrieked. -

" 'Sheartr cried Ebenezer, and raised his arms to protect his face. "Drake-
pecker! Where is Drakepecker!"

- hath undone usr Bertrand wailed- <<llie mGicl* hath

us

But it was unthinkable that the boys had leaped from the cliff-top, and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 305 ]

unlikely that they had climbed down without making a sound or dislodging
a pebble. It seemed probable to Ebenezer that they had been hiding in
the cave, above their heads, waiting their chance to jump. One of them
addressed the prisoners sharply in an unknown tongue, signaling them to
rise, and pointed to the mouth of the cave.

"Must we climb up?" asked Ebenezer, and for answer felt a spear point
prick his ham.

"Tell them we're gods!" Bertrand urged. "They mean to eat us alive!"

The command was repeated; they scrambled up the rocks to the lip of
the cave. The boys chattered as though to someone inside, and from the
shadow an older, calmer voice answered. The prisoners were forced to enter
—bent over, since the roof was never more than five feet high. The inside
stank of excrement and other unnameable odors. After a few moments,
when their eyes grew accustomed to the dark, they saw a full-grown
savage lying naked on a blanket on the floor, which was littered with shells,
bones, and crockery pots. At least part of the stench came from his
right knee, wrapped in ragged bandages. He raised himself on his elbows,
wincing, and scrutinized the prisoners. Then, to their unspeakable sur-
prise, he said "English?"

"FGod!" Ebenezer gasped. "Who are you, sir, that you speak our
tongue?"

The savage considered again their matted hair, torn clothing, and bare
feet. "You seek Quassapelagh? Did Warren send you for Quassapelagh?"
The boys moved closer with their spears.

"We seek no one," the poet said, clearly and loudly. "We are Englishmen,
thrown into the sea by pirates to drown; we reached this isle last night,
by great good fortune, but we know not where we are."

One of the boys spoke excitedly and brandished his spear, eager to have
at them, but the older man silenced him with a word.

"Prithee spare us," Ebenezer pleaded. "We do not know this Warren
that you speak ofr or any soul else hereabouts."

Again the youths made as if to run them through. The injured savage
rebuked them more sharply than before and apparently ordered them to
stand guard outside, for they evacuated the clammy cave with some show
of reluctance.

"They are good boys," the savage said. "They hate the English as much
as I, and wish to kill you."

"Then there are English on this island? What is the name oft?" Bertrand
was still too frightened to speak, but Ebenezer, despite his recent daydreams

[ 306 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

of a poet's island, could not contain his joy at the prospect of rejoining
his countrymen.

The savage regarded him narrowly. "You do not know where you are?"

"Only that 'tis an ocean isle/7 the Laureate replied.

"And you know not the name of Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King?"

"Nay."

For some moments their captor continued to search their faces. Then,
as though persuaded of their innocence, he lay back on the pallet and
stared at the roof of the cave.

"I am Quassapelagh," he declared. "The Anacostin King."

"KingF Bertrand exclaimed in a whisper to Ebenezer. "D'ye think
he's king of one of our golden towns?"

"This is the land of the Piscataways," Quassapelagh went on. "These
are the fields and forests of the Piscataways. That water is the water of
the Piscataways; these cliffs are our cliffs. They have belonged to the Pis-
cataways since the beginning of the world. My father was a king in this
land, and his father, and his father; and so for a time was I. But Quassapel-
agh is king no more, nor will my sons and grandsons rule."

"Ask him which way to the nearest golden town," Bertrand whispered,
but his master gestured him to silence.

<r\Vhy do you lie here in this miserable den?" Ebenezer asked " 'Tis
no fit dwelling for a king, methinks."

"This country is Quassapelagh's no more," the King replied. "Your
people have stolen it away. They came in ships, with sword and cannon,
and took the fields and forests from my father. They have herded us like
animals and driven us off. And when I said, 'This land belongs to the
Piscataways,' they turned me into prison. Our emperor, Ochotomaquath,
must hide like an animal in the hills, and in his place sits a young whelp
Passop, that licketh the English emperor's boots. My people must do his
bidding or starve."

"Injustice!" Ebenezer cried. "Did you hear, Bertrand? Who is this War-
ren that so presumes, and makes me feel shame to be an Englishman?
Some rogue of a pirate, I'll wager, that hath claimed the island for his own.
1'faith!" He clutched at the valet's sleeve. "I recall old Carl, the sailmaker,
spoke of a pirate town called Libertatia, on the Isle of Madagascar; pray
God 'tis not the same!"

"I know not the Emperor's name," Quassapelagh said, "for he hath but
ktely come to oppress my nation. This Warren is but a jailer and chief
of soldiers "

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 307 ]

At this moment a great commotion began outside the cave.

"Drakepecker!" Bertrand cried.

There at the cave's mouth the great black stood indeed: at his feet,
dropped in anger, lay the rude spear improvised by Ebenezer, on which
two bloody rabbits were impaled, and in each great hand he held a young
sentry by the neck. One he had already by some means disarmed, and
before the other could use his weapon to advantage, the fearsome Negro
cracked their heads together and flung them to the beach below.

"Bravo!" Ebenezer cheered.

"In here, Drakepecker!" Bertrand called, and leaped to pinion Quassa-
pelagh. "Come hither and crack this rascal's head as well!"

The Negro snatched up his spear and charged into the cave with a roar,
plainly intending to add Quassapelagh to his other trophies.

"Stay! Drakepecker!" Ebenezer commanded.

"Stick him!" shouted Bertrand, holding Quassapelagh's arms from be-
hind. The savage offered no resistance, but regarded the intruder with stern
contempt.

"I forbid it!" said Ebenezer, and grasped the spear.

Bertrand protested: " 'Tis what the wretch designed for us, sir!"

"If so, he showed no sign oft. Release him." When his arms were free
Quassapelagh lay back on the blanket and stared impassively at the ceiling.
"Those young boys were his sons," Ebenezer said. "Go with Drakepecker
and fetch them here, if he hath not killed them." The two men went,
Bertrand ^th considerable misgivings which he did not hesitate to give
voice to, and Ebenezer said to Quassapelagh, "Forgive my man for in-
juring your sons; he thought we were in peril. We mean you no harm at
all, sir. You have suffered enough at English hands."

But the savage remained impassive. "Shall I rejoice to find an English-
man with mercy?" He pointed to his evil-smelling knee. "Which is more
merciful, a spear in the heart or this poisoned knee, that I cut while flee-
ing like a rabbit in the night? If my sons are dead, I starve; if they live
I die of this poison. Your heart is good: I ask you to kill Quassapelagh."

Presently Bertrand and the Negro returned, marching at the points of
their spears the two young boys, who seemed to be suffering only from
bruises and sore heads.

"It is enough that my sons live," Quassapelagh said. "Tell your man to
kill me now."

"Nay, I've better work for him," Ebenezer said, and to Bertrand he
declared, "Drakepecker will remain here with the king and mind his wants

[ 208 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

while we sound the temper of these English bandits. The boys can lead us
to the outskirts of their settlement."

"Tis not mine to argue/' Bertiand sighed. "I only hope they've not
snatched all the golden towns and set themselves up as gods/'

Ebenezer then made clear to the Negro, by means of signs, that he
wished him to feed the King and dress the infected knee; to the latter item,
presented more as a query than a command, the black man responded
with bright affirmative nods and an enthusiastic chatter that suggested
acquaintance with some prophylactic or therapeutic measures. Without
more ado he removed the dirty dressing and examined the malodorous in-
flammation with a clearly chirurgical interest. Then, in his own tongue,
accompanying his orders with enough gesticulation for clarity, he directed
one of the boys to clean and cook the rabbits and sent the other to fetch
two crockery pots of water.

" 'Sheart!" Bertiand said respectfully. "The wighf s a physician as well!
Tis an honor to be his god, is't not, sir?"

The poet smiled. "Haply he merits a better, Bertrand; he is in sooth a
masterly creation."

Before two hours had elapsed, the rabbits were cooked and eaten—along
with raw oysters provided by the youths and a kind of parched and pow-
dered corn called rockahominy, of which the King had a large jarful— and
Quassapelagh's wound had been lanced with his own knife, drained of pus,
washed clean, and dressed with some decoction brewed by the Negro out
of various roots and herbs which he had gathered up in the woods while
the rabbits were roasting. Even the savages were impressed by the perform-
ance: the boys fingered their lumps with more of awe than of resentment,
and Quassapelagh's hard eyes shone.

"If the English are not far distant, I should like to have a look at them
ere dark," the Laureate announced. When Quassapelagh replied that they
were not above three miles away, he repeated his orders to the Negro,
who, kneeling as usual at the sound of his name, acquiesced tearfully to
the separation.

"If we find them to be pirates or highwaymen, we'll return a once/'
Ebenezer told the King.

^ "The Emperor of the English will not harm you," Quassapelagh said,
"nor need you fear for my sons, who are unknown to him. But speak not
the name of the Anacostin King to any man unless you wish me dead, and
do not return to this cave. Your kindness to Quassapelagh will not be for-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 309 ]

gotten." He spoke in the native tongue to one of the boys, who fetched
him a small leather packet from the rear of the cave.

" Tis a map of the Seven Cities he means to show us!" Bertrand whis-
pered.

"Take these/' said the King, and gave to each of the men a small amulet,
carved, it appeared, from the vertebra of a relatively large fish— a hollow,
watery-white cylinder of bone perhaps three quarters of an inch in width
and half that in diameter, with small projections where the dorsal and
ventral ribs had been cut off and the near-translucence characteristic of the
bones of fish. Bertrand's face fell. "It seems a small repayment for my
life," Quassapelagh said sternly, "but it was for one of these that Warren
turned me free."

"This Warren is a fool," grumbled Bertrand.

The King ignored him. "Wear it as a ring upon your finger," he told
Ebenezer. "One day when beath is very close, this ring may turn him
away."

Ebenezer too was somewhat disappointed by the present, the rude carv-
ings of which could not even be called decorative, but he accepted it politely
and, since the outside diameter was too large for comfort, strung it upon
a thin rawhide thong and wore it around his neck, under his shirt. Bertrand,
on the other hand, stuffed his ungraciously into a pocket of his trousers.
Then,, it being already late in the afternoon and the beach in shadow
from the cliffs, they bade warm good-byes to the big Negro and Quassape-
lagh and, with the savage boys as guides ascended to the forest and struck
out more or less northwestward, moving slowly because of their bare feet.

"Thou'rt not o'erjoyed at traveling to our countrymen," Ebenezer ob-
served to Bertrand.

"I'm not o'erjoyed at walking into a pirates' nest, when we could as
lightly search for golden towns," the valet admitted. "Nor did we drive
a happy bargain with that salvage king, to trade Drakepecker for a pair
of fishbones."

" 'Twas not a trade, nor yet a gift/' the poet said. "If he was obliged
to us for his life, then saving ours discharged his obligation."

But Bertrand was not so easily mollified.

" 'Sbody, sir, I mean nor selfishness nor blasphemy, but 'tis precious rare
a valet 'gets to be a god! Yet I'd scarce commenced to take the measure
of the office, as't were, and get the hang oft, ere ye trade off my parishioner
for a pitiful pair of fishbones! I wanted but another day or two to god it
about, don't ye know, ere we turned old Drakepecker loose."

[ J1O ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Not I," the Laureate said. "'Tis a post I feel well quit of. We found
him cast up helpless from the sea and left him helpful in a cave; he hath
been slave to a god and now is servant to a king. Whither he goes thence
is his own affair. We twain did well to start him on his journey— is that
not godding it enough? Besides which/' he concluded, "you had not the
chore of keeping him occupied, as I did, or you'd not complain; I was
pleased to find that work to set him to. If we reach our golden cities, my
own shall be republican, not theocratic, nor have I any wish to be its ruler.
That much Drakepecker hath taught me."

Bertrand smiled. "Ye've been not long a master, thus to speak, sir! D'ye
think I mean to fill my head with dogmas and decretals, once I'm in my
temple? That is the work of the lesser fry — priests and clerks and all that
ilk. A god doth naught but sit and sniff the incense, count his money,
and take his pick o' the wenches."

"Methinks your reign in Heaven shan't be long," Ebenezer observed.

"Nor doth it need be," said his valet.

After a while the woods thinned out, and to westward, through the trees,
they saw a cleared field of considerable size in which grew orderly green
rows of an unfamiliar broad-leaved plant. Ebenezer's heart leaped at the
sight

"Look yonder, Bertrand! That is no salvage crop!" He laid hold of one
of their guides and pointed to the field. "What do you call that?" he
demanded loudly, as if to achieve communication by volume. "What is
the name of that? Did the English plant that field?"

The boy caught up the word happily and nodded. "English. English."
Then he launched into some further observation, in the course of which
Ebenezer heard the word tobacco.

"Tobacco?" he inquired. "That is tobacco?"

"How can that be?" Bertrand wondered,

"Tis not so strange, after all," said tte Laureate. "Captain Pound was
wont to sail the latitude of the Azores, that ran to the Virginia Capes,
and any isle along that parallel would have Virginia's climate, would it
not?"

Bertrand then demanded to know why a band of pirates would waste
their time on agriculture.

"We have no proof they're pirates," Ebenezer reminded him. They could
as well be sot-weed smugglers, of which Henry Burlingame declares there
are a great number, or simply honest planters. Tis a thing to hope for
is'tnot?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 31 1 ]

A contrary sentiment showed in Bertrand's face, but before he had a
chance to voice it the two boys motioned them to silence. The four moved
stealthily through a final grove of trees to where the forest ended at a
riverbank on the north and a roadway paved with bare logs on the west.
Sounds of activity came to them from a large log structure like a store-
house, obviously the work of white men, that ran from the roadside back
into the trees; at their guide's direction they crept up to the rear wall,, from
which point of vantage, their hearts in their mouths, they could safely peer
down the road toward the river.

"I'God!" Ebenezer whispered. The noise they had heard, a rumbling
and chanting, was made by several teams of three Negroes each, who, bare-
footed and naked to the waist, were rolling enormous wooden hogsheads
over the road down to a landing at the river's edge and singing as they
worked. On a pier that ran out from the shore was a group of bareheaded,
shoeless men dressed in bleached and tattered Scotch cloth, who despite
their sunburnt faces and generally uncouth appearance was plainly of
European and not barbaric' origin; they were engaged in nothing more
strenuous than leaning against the pilings, smoking pipes, passing round
a crockery jug (after each drink from which they wiped their mouths on
the tops of their hairy forearms), and watching the Negroes wrestle their
burdens into a pair of lighters moored alongside. At sight of them Ebenezer
rejoiced, but more marvelous still—so marvelous that the beholding of it
brought tears to his eyes— out in mid-channel of the broad river, which
must have been nearly two miles wide at that point, a stately, high-pooped,
three-masted vessel rode at anchor, loading cargo from the lighters, and
from her maintop hung folds of red, white, and blue that could be no
other banner but the King's colors.

"These are no brigands, but honest English planters!" Ebenezer laughed.
" Tis some island of the Indies we have hit on!" And for all the others
warned him to be silent, he cried out for joy, burst out onto the roadway,
and ran whooping and hallooing to the wharf. The young savages fled into
the forest; Bertrand, filled with gloom and consternation, lingered by the
warehouse wall to watch.

"Countrymen! Countrymen!" Ebenezer called. The Negroes stopped
their song and left their labors to see him go by, and the white men too
turned round in surprise at the outcry. It was indeed a most uncommon
spectacle: even thinner than usual from the rigors of his months on ship-
board, Ebenezer bounded down the log road like a shaggy stork. His feet
were bare and blistered, his shirt and breeches shred to rags; bald and beard-

[ 312 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOIt

less at the time of his abduction from the Poseidon, he had let his hair
grow wild from scalp and chin alike, so that now, though still of no great
length, it was entirely matted and ungroomed. Add to this, he was more
sunburnt than the planters and at least as dirty, the very picture of a casta-
way, and his haste was made the more grotesque by the way he clutched
both arms across his shirt front, wherein he carried still the curling pages
of the Journal.

"Countrymen!" he cried again upon reaching the landing. "Say some-
thing quickly,, that I may hear what tongue you speak!"

The men exchanged glances; some shifted their positions, and others
sucked uneasily on their pipes.

"He is a madman/' one suggested, and before he could retreat found
himself embraced.

"Thou'rt English! Dear God, thou'rt English!"

"Back off, there!"

Ebenezer pointed jubilantly seawards. "Where is that vessel bound, sir,
as thou'rt a Christian Englishman?*'

"For Portsmouth, with the fleet "

"Praise Heav'n!" He leaped and clapped his hands and called back to
the warehouse, "Bertrand! Bertrandl They're honest English gentlemen all!
Hither, Bertrand! And prithee, wondrous Englishman," he said, and laid
hold of another planter who, owing to the water at his back, could not
escape, "what isle is this I have been washed to? Is't Barbados, or the far
Antilles?"

"Thy brains are pickled with rum/' growled the planter, shaking free.

'The Bermoothes, then!" Ebenezer cried. He fell to his knees and
clutched the fellow's trouser legs. "Tell me 'tis Corvo, or some isle I have
not heard of!"

«/"TiS n0t ^ °ne P°r fte other> nor an? isle else>" ^ Pinter said.
"'Tis but poor shitten Maryland, damn your eyes,"

18: THE LAUREATE PAYS HIS FARE TO CROSS A RIVER

"MARYLAND!" EBENEZER RELEASED ms VICTIM'S TROUSERS AND LOOKED
back toward the woods he'd emerged from, at the fields of green tobacco
and the Negroes grinning broadly beside their hogsheads. His face lit up.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 313 ]

Still kneeling, as though transfixed, he laid his right hand over his heart
and raised his left to the gently rolling hills, behind which the sun was
just descending. "Smile, ye gracious hills and sunlit trees!" he commanded.
"Thine own sweet singer, thy Laureate, is come to noise thy glory!"

This was a disembarkation-piece he had composed aboard the Poseidon
some months before, deeming it fit that as Laureate of Maryland he
should salute his bailiwick poetically upon first setting foot on it, and in-
tending also to leave no question among his new compatriots that he was
poet to the bone. He was therefore not a little piqued to see his initial
public declamation received with great hilarity by his audience, who guf-
fawed and snorted, smacked their thighs and held their sides, wet their
noses and elbowed their neighbors, and pointed horny fingers at Ebenezer,
and broke wind in their uncouth breeches.

The Laureate let go his pose, rose to his feet, arched his great blond
eyebrows, pursed his lips, and said, "I'll cast you no more pearls,, my friends.
Have a care, or I'll see thy masters birch you one and all." He turned
his back on them and hurried to the foot of the landing, where Bertrand
stood uncomfortably under the scrutiny of several delighted Negroes.

"Put by your dream of seven cities, Bertrand: you stand upon the blessed
soil of Maryland!"

"I heard as much," the valet said sourly.

"Is't not a paradise? Look yonder, how the sunset fires those trees!"

"Yet your fellow Marylanders would win no place at Court, I think."

"Nay, who shall blame them for their disrespect?" Ebenezer looked down
at his own garb and Bertrand's, and laughed. "What man could see a
Laureate Poet here? Besides, they're only simple servants."

" Tis an idle master lets 'ern drink their afternoons, then," Bertrand
said skeptically. "I cannot blame Quassapelagh "

"La!" the poet warned. "Speak not his name!"

"I merely meant, I see his point of view."

"Only think!" Ebenezer marveled. "He was king of the salvage Indians

of Maryland! And Drakepecker " He looked with awe on the muscular

Negroes and frowned.

Bertrand followed the thought, and his eyes welled up with tears. "How
could that princely fellow be a slave? Plague take your Maryland!"

"We must not judge o'erhastily," Ebenezer said, but he stroked his beard
reflectively.

All through this colloquy the idle Englishmen had wheezed and snick-
ered in the background. One of their number— a wiry, wrinkled old repro-

[ 314 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

bate with clipped ears and a branded palm— now scraped and bowed his
way up to them and said with exaggerated accent, "Your Grace must
pardon our rudeness. We're at your service, m'lord."

"Be't so," Ebenezer said at once, and giving Bertiand a knowing look
he stepped out on the pier to address the group. "Know, my good men,
that rude and tattered though I appear, I am Ebenezer Cooke, appointed
by the Lord Proprietary to the office of Poet and Laureate of the Province
of Maryland; I and my man have suffered imprisonment at the hands of
pirates and narrowly escaped a watery grave. I shall not this time report
your conduct to your masters, but do henceforth show more respect, if not
for me, at least for Poetry!"

This speech they greeted with applause and raucous cheers, which, taking
them as a sign of gratitude for his leniency, elicited from the Laureate a
benign smile.

"Now," he said, "I know not where in Maryland I stand, but I must go
at once to Maiden, my plantation on Choptank River. I shall require both
transportation and direction, for I know naught of the Province. You, my
man," he went on, addressing the old man with the branded palm who
had spoken previously. "Will you lead me thither? I'm certain your master
shan't object, when he learns the office of your passenger."

"Aye, now, that's certain!" the fellow answered, with a glance at his
companions. "But say, now, Master Poet, how will ye pay me for my labor?
For we must paddle o'er this river here, and there's nothing floats like
gold."

Ebenezer hid his discomfort behind an even haughtier mien. "As't hap-
pens, my man, what gold I have is not upon my person. In any case, I
daresay your master would forbid you to take money in such a worthy
service."

"HI take my chances there," the old man said. "If ye cannot pay me,
ye'll cross as best ye can. Is't possible so great a man hath not a ring or
other kind of valuable?"

"Ye may have mine/' growled Bertrand. "Tis a bona fide salvage relic,
that I hear is worth a fortune." He reached into his breeches pocket. "Hi,
there, Fve lost it through a hole "

"Out on't!" Ebenezer cried, losing patience with the Marylander. "Not
for nothing am I Laureate of this Province! Ferry me across, fellow, and
you shall be rewarded with the finest gold e'er mined: the pure coin of
poetry!"

The old man cocked his head as though impressed. "Coin o' poetry, is
it? Ye mean ye'll say me a verse for paddling across the river?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 315 ]

"Recite?" Ebenezer scoffed. "Nay, man, I shan't recite; I shall compose!
I shall extemporize! Your gold will not be soiled from many hands but
be struck gleaming from the mint before your eyes!"

The man scratched one clipped ear. "Well, I don't know. I ne'er heard
tell of business done like that."

"Tut," Ebenezer reassured him. " Tis done from day to day in Europe,
and for weightier matters than a pitiful ferry ride. Doth not Cervantes tell
us of a poet in Spain that hired himself a harlot for three hundred sonnets
on the theme of Pyramus and Thisbe?"

"Ye do not tell me!" marveled the ferryman. "Three hundred sonnets!
And what, pray, might a sonnet be?"

Ebenezer smiled at the fellow's ignorance. " 'Tis a verse-form."

"A verse-form, now!"

"Aye. We poets do not merely make poems; we make certain sorts of
poems. Just as in coins you have farthings and pence and shillings and
crowns, in verse you have quatrains and sonnets and villanelles and ron-
delays."

"Aha!" said the ferryman. "And this sonnet, then, is like a shilling? Or
a half crown? For I shall ask a crown to paddle ye o'er this river."

"A crown!" the poet cried.

"No less, Your Excellency—the currents and tides, ye know, this time
of year."

Ebenezer looked skeptically at the placid river.

"He is a rogue and very Jew," Bertrand said.

"Ah well, no matter,, Bertrand." Ebenezer winked at his valet and turned
again to the Marylander. "But see here, my man, you must know a sonnet's
worth a half pound sterling on the current London market."

"Spare me the last line oft then," said the ferryman, "for I shan't give
change."

"Done." To the bystanders, who had watched the bargaining with amuse-
ment, he said, "Witness that this fellow hath agreed, on consideration of
one sonnet, not including the final line, to ferry Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and

Laureate of Maryland, and his man across the I say, what do you call

this river?"

"The Choptank/' Ebenezer's boatman answered quickly.

"You don't say! Then Maiden must be near at hand!"

"Aye," the old man vowed. " Tis just through yonder woods. Ye can
walk there lightly once ye cross this river."

"Excellent! Done, then?"

[ 316 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Done, Your Highness, done!' ' He held up an unclean finger. "But I
shall want my payment in advance." ,

"Ah, come now!" Ebenezer protested.

"What doth it matter?" whispered Bertrand.

"What warrant have I thou'rt a poet at all?" the man insisted. "Pay me
now, or no feny ride."

Ebenezer sighed. "So be't." And to the group: "A silence, now, an it
please you."

Then, pressing a finger to his temple and squinting both his eyes, he
struck an attitude of composition, and after a moment declaimed:

"Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-Raven sings;

There, under Ebon shades, and low-browed Rocks,
As ragged as thy Locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell"

There was some moments' silence.

"Well, come, my man!" the poet urged. "You have your fare!"

"What? Is that a sonnet?"

'On my honor," Ebenezer assured him. "Minus the final line, to be

.

sure

"To be sure, to be sure." The boatman tugged at his mutilated ear.
"So that is my half-pound sonnet! A great ugly one 'twas, at that, with
all those shrieks and hollowings in't."

"What matter? Would you lift your nose at a gold piece if the King had
an ugly head? A sonnet's a sonnet."

"Aye, aye, 'tis the truth," sighed the ferryman, and shook his head as
though outwitted. "Very well, then; yonder's my canoe."

"Let's be off," said the poet, and took his valet's arm triumphantly.

But when he saw the vessel they were to cross in, he came near to letting
his ferryman keep the sonnet gratis. "Had I guessed this swine trough was
to be our boat, I'd have kept the dark Gimmerian desert in rty purse "

"Complain no more," the boatman answered. "Had I but known whrt
a grubby pittance was your sonnet, ye'd have swum for all o' me."

Thus understanding each other, ferryman and passengers climbed cau-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ Jiy ]

tiously aboard the dugout canoe and proceeded out onto the river, which
lay as smooth as any looking glass. When well past mid-channel they found
the surface still unrippled, the passengers began to suspect that the difficulty
of the crossing had been exaggerated.

"I say," asked Bertrand from the bow, "where are those wicked tides and
currents, that made this trip so dear?"

"Nowhere save in my fancy," said the ferryman with a grin. "Since ye
were paying your passage with a poem, I had as well demand a big one-
it cost ye no more."

"Oho!" cried Ebenezer. "So you deceived me! Well, think not thou'rt
aught the richer for't, my fellow, for the sonnet was not mine: I had it
from one whose talent equals my own "

But the boatman was not a whit put out by this disclosure. "Last year's
gold is as good as this year's," he declared, "and one man's as good as
another's. Though ye did play false upon your pledge, I'm nowise poorer
for't. A ha' pound's a ha' pound, and a sonnet's a sonnet," Just then the
canoe touched the opposite shore of the river. "Here ye be, Master Poet,
and the joke's on you."

"Blackguard!" grumbled Bertrand.

Ebenezer smiled. "As you will, sir; as you will." He stepped ashore with
Bertrand and waited until the ferryman pushed back onto the river; then
he laughed and called to him: "Yet the truth is, Master Numskull, you
sit fleeced from nape to shank! Not only is your sonnet not my doing;
'tis not even a sonnet! Good day, sir!" He made ready to flee through the
woods to Maiden should the ferryman pursue them, but that gentleman
merely clucked his tongue, between strokes of his paddle.

"No matter, Master Madman," he called back. " Tis not the Choptank
River, either. Good night, sir!"

19: THE LAUREATE ATTENDS A SWINE-MAIDEN'S
TALE

UPON REALIZING THAT THE FERRYMAN HAD MAROONED HIM IN HE KNEW

not what wild woods, Ebenezer set up a considerable hallooing and crying,
hoping thereby to attract someone from the opposite shore to rescue him;
but the men in Scotch cloth were evidently in on the prank, for they

[ 318 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

turned away and left the hapless pair to their own devices. Already the
light was failing: at length he left off his calling and surveyed the woods
around them, which grew more shadowy by the minute.

"Only think on't!" he said. "Twas Maryland all along!"

Bertrand kicked disconsolately at a tree stump. "More's the pity, says I.
Your Maryland hath not even civil citizens/7

"Ah, friend, your heart was set on a golden city, and Maryland hath
none. But Gold is where you find it, is't not? What treasure is more valuable
than this, to reach unscathed our journey's end?"

"I would Fd stayed with Drakepecker on the beach/' the valet said.
"What good hath come since we discovered where we are? Who knows
what beasts we'll find in yonder shadows? Or salvages, that rightly hate
an English face?"

"And yet, 'tis Maryland!" Ebenezer sighed happily. "Who knows but
what my father, and his father, have crossed this selfsame river and seen
those selfsame trees? Think on't, man: we are not far from Maiden!"

"And is that such a joyous thought, sir,, when for aught we know 'tis
no more your estate?"

Ebenezer's face fell. "I'faith, I had forgot your wager!" At thought of
it he joined his valet's gloom and sat at the foot of a nearby birch. "We
dare not try these woods tonight, at any rate. Build up a fire, and we'll
find our way at dawn."

"Twill draw the Indians, will it not?" Bertrand asked.

"It might," the poet said glumly. "On the other hand, 'twill keep away
the beasts. Do as you please."

Indeed, even as Bertrand commenced striking on the flint from his tin-
derbox— in which also he had brought from the beach a small supply of
dried sea-grass for tinder— the two men heard the grunt of an animal
somewhere among the trees not many yards upstream.

"Hark!" Goose flesh pimpled the Laureate's arms, and he jumped to
his feet. "Make haste there with the fire!"

The grunt sounded again, accompanied by a rustling of leaves; a moment
later another answered from farther away, and then another and another,,
until the wood was filled with the sound of beasts, advancing in their
direction. While Bertrand struck furiously at the flint, Ebenezer called
once more across the river for help, but there was no one to hear.

"A spark! I have a spark!" cried Bertrand, and cupped the tinder in his
hands to blow up a flame. "Make ready the kindling wood!" '

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 319 ]

" 'Sheart, we've not got any!" The sound was almost upon them now.
"Run for the river!"

Bertrand dropped the seaweed, and they raced headlong into the shal-
lows; nor had they got knee-deep before they heard the animals burst out
of the woods behind them and squeal and snuffle on the muddy shore.

"You there!" cried a woman's voice. "Are ye mad or merely drunken?"

"Marry!" said Bertrand. " Tis a woman!"

They turned round in surprise and in the last light saw standing on the
mud bank a disheveled woman of uncertain age, dressed, like the men on
the landing, in bleached and tattered Scotch cloth and carrying a stick
with which she drove a number of swine. These latter grumped and rooted
along the shore, pausing often to regard the two men balefully.

"Dear Heav'n, the jest's on us!" the poet called back, and did his best
to laugh. "My man and I are strangers to the Province, and were left
stranded here by some dolt for a prank!"

"Come hither, then," the woman said. "These swine shan't eat ye." To
reassure them she drove the nearest hog off with her stick, and the two
men waded ^horewards.

"I thank you for your kindness," Ebenezer said; "haply 'tis in your power
to do me yet another, for I need a lodging for the night. My name is
Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland, and
I— nay, madam, fear not for your modesty!" The woman had gasped and
turned away as they approached. "Our clothes are wet and ragged, but
they cover us yet!" Ebenezer prattled on. "In sootk I'm not the picture
of a laureate poet, I know well; 'tis owing to the many trials I've been
through, the like of which you'd ne'er believe if I should tell you. Kidnaped
by pirates and thrown overboard to die! But once I reach my manor on
the Choptank— i'God/"

The woman had turned in his direction and raised her head. Her black
hair showed no signs of soap or comb, nor had she plagued her skin over-
much with scrubbing. But what caused Ebenezer to break off in mid-
sentence was the fact that except for her slovenliness and the open sores
that even in the shadow were conspicuous on her face and arms, the swine-
maiden could have passed for the girl in the Cyprian's rigging; and but
for a decade's difference in their apparent ages, she bore a certain resem-
blance to the youthful whore Joan Toast.

"Am I such a sight as that?" the woman asked harshly.

"Nay, nay, forgive me!" Ebenezer begged. " 'Tis quite the contrary: you
look in some ways like a girl I knew in London— how long since!"

[ 320 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Ye do not tell me! Had this wench my lovely clothes and fine com-
plexion, and did ye show a nice concern for her maidenhead?"

"Ah, prithee, speak less sourly!" the Laureate said. "If I said aught to hurt
thee, I swear 'twas not intended!"

The maid turned sullenly away. "My master's house lies just round yon-
der point, a mile or two. Ye can bed there if yeVe a mind to." Without
waiting for reply she smote the nearest hog upon its ham-butt with her
stick to start it moving, and the procession grunted upstream toward the
point.

"She bears some likeness to Joan Toast," Ebenezer whispered to Ber-
trand.

"As doth a bat to a butterfly," the valet replied contemptuously, "that
make their way through the world by the selfsame means."

"Ah, now," the poet protested, and the memory of his adventure on the
Cyprian made him dizzy; "she's but a swineherd and unclean, yet she
hath a certain air . . ."

" Tis that she's windward of us, if ye should ask me."

But Ebenezer would not be discouraged; he caught up to the woman
and asked her name.

"Why, 'tis Susan Warren, sir," she said uncordially. "I suppose ye want
to hire me for your whore?"

"Dear Heavens, no! Twas but an idle pleasantry, I swear! D'you think
a laureate poet plays with whores?"

For answer, Susan Warren only sniffed.

"Who is your master, then?" Ebenezer demanded, somewhat less gently.
" 'Twill be surpassing pleasant to meet a proper gentleman, for I've met
no Marylander yet who was not either a rogue or a simpleton. Yet Lord
Baltimore, when he wrote out my commission, made much of the manners
and good breeding in his Province and charged me to write of them."

Instead of answering, the swine-maiden, to Ebenezer's considerable sur-
prise, began to weep.

"Why, what is this? Said I aught to affront you?"

The procession halted, and Bertrand came up chuckling from behind.
" Tis that the lady hath tender feelings, sir. 'Twas boorish of ye not to
hire her services."

"Enough!" the poet commanded, and said to Susan Warren, "'Tis not
my wont to traffic in harlotry, ma'am; forgive me if I gave you to think
otherwise."

"'Tis none o' your doing, sir," the woman replied, and resumed her

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 321 ]

pace along the path. "The truth is that my master's such a rascal, and uses
me so ill, e'en to think on't brings the tears."

"And how is that? Doth he beat you, then?"

She shook her head and sniffed. "If 'twere but a birching now and again
I'd not complain. The rod's but one among my grievances, nor yet a very
great one."

"He doth worse, then?" Ebenezer exclaimed.

"Ffaith, he must be hard pressed for diversion," said the valet, and drew
a stern look from his master.

Susan Warren permitted herself another round of wails and tears, after
which, heaving a sigh to Heaven and kicking in the bacon a pig that stopped
before her to make water in the path, she poured out to the Laureate the
whole tale of her tribulations, as follows:

"I was bom Susan Smith," she said, "and my mother died a-bearing me,
My father had a small shop in London, near Puddle Dock, where he
coopered casks and barrels for the ships. One day when I was eighteen
and pretty as ye please, I took a stroll down Blackfriars o'er to Ludgate,
and was bowed to by a handsome wight that called me Miss Williams,
and asked to walk along with me. Te may not do't,' I told him, 'nor is
my name Miss Williams/ 'How's this?' he cried. "Thou'rt not Miss Eliza-
beth Williams from Gracechurch Street?' 1 am not/ said I. 'Then pardon
me/ said he, 'thou'rt like as twins/

" Twas clear to me the lad spoke truly, for he was a civil gentleman and
blushed at his mistake, He said he was in love with this Miss Williams, but
for all she said she loved him she'd have none o' him for her husband, and
spoke of some great sin that damned her soul. Yet this Humphrey Warren
(that was his name) declared he'd have her to wife with all the sins o'
man upon her conscience.

"I saw poor Humphrey often then by Ludgate, for Miss Williams grew
less ardent day by day; he told me all his trials on her account, and said we
looked so much alike, 'twas as if he spoke to her instead of me. For my part,
I envied this Miss Williams not a little, and thought her a great fool to
scorn so fine a gentleman. Dear Humphrey was not rich, but he held a
decent post in the firm of a Captain Mitchell, that was Miss Williams'
older half brother,, and had every other virtue that could please a woman's
heart.

"Then one day Humphrey came to Father's shop near Puddle Dock,
weeping fit to die, and said Miss Williams had done herself to death with

[ 522 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

poison! I took pity on the man, albeit at heart I had none for Miss Williams,
and rejoiced when Humphrey came to see me every day. At length he said,
'Dear Susan, thy likeness to Elizabeth is my curse and my salvation! I weep
to see ye, thinking of her dead; yet I cannot think her gone, with her living
image every day before me/ And I said, 'I could wish, sir, ye saw somewhat
beyond that likeness/

"This gave him pause, and anon he went to Father, and we two were
wed. Yet for all I strove to win my Humphrey's love, I saw 'twas but the
image of Miss Williams he made love to. One night when he lay sleeping
fast I kissed him, and in his sleep he said, 'God save ye, sweet Elizabeth!'
Fool that I was, I woke him on the instant, and made him choose betwixt
the two of us. 'Elizabeth is dead,' I said, 'and I'm alive. Do ye love me,
love myself and not my likeness, else I shan't stay in this bed another
moment!'

"Ah, God! Had I been but ten years older, or one groatsworth wiser, I'd
have held my tongue! What matter what he called me, so he loved me?
Why, didn't he call me Honey and Sweetheart and a flock of names besides,
as well as Susan? I cursed my speech the moment 'twas spoke, but the hurt
was done. 'Dear Susan!' Humphrey cried. 'Why did ye that? Would God
ye had not asked me to choose!'

"All for naught then my begging and weeping; he'd not let me put by my
words, but he must choose. And choose he did, though not a word he said
oft; for next morn he was too ill to rise, and died not four days after. Thus
was I widowed at nineteen years. . . .

"My father had grave troubles of his own, for his trade was poor, and
Humphrey's niggard funeral took his savings. He went into debt to pay for
food and stock, and just when the lot was gone, and the creditors were
hounding at our door, a man came in to order casks for's vessel, which he
said was bound for Maryland at month's end. So pleased was Father to
get the work, he bade me brew the man some tea. But at sight o' me the
wight turned pale and wept, for all he was a burly bearded sailor!

" What is't?' said I, that had been like to die of grief myself those many
weeks. The captain begged forgiveness and said 'twas my likeness to his
dear dead sister caused his tears. In short, we learned he was Captain
William Mitchell of Gracechurch Street, the same that was half brother to
Elizabeth and my Humphrey's late employer. Had I but known then what
vipers hid behind that kindly face, I had turned him out and bolted fast
the door! But instead we wept together: I for my Humphrey, Captain

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 323 ]

Mitchell for his sister, and father for the miseries of this life, wherein we
lose the ones we love and cannot even mourn them fitly, for grubbing to
feed the living."

Here Susan had to interrupt her narrative for some moments to give
expression to ,her grief. Tears ran as well down Ebenezer's face, and even
Bertrand was no longer hostile, but sighed in sympathy.

"Captain Mitchell then came oft to visit us/' she went on, "and father
and I being innocent of the World's wickedness, we took him to our hearts.
We had no secret he was not made privy to, though he gave us to know
little of himself. Yet we guessed that he was rich, for he spoke of carrying
twenty servants to Maryland, whither he sailed to take some fine post in
the government.

"Then when the coopering was done and all the casks hauled over to
the dock, Captain Mitchell made my father a strange proposal: he would
pay off Father's debts and leave him unencumbered for good and all, if I
would sail to Maryland with Mrs. Mitchell and himself. He would treat me
as his own dear sister, he declared; nay, more— 'twas just that likeness had
resolved him, and he meant to call me Elizabeth Williams. I was to be a
sister to him, and companion to his ailing wife . . .

"My father wept and thanked him for his kindness, but said he could
not live if I were gone, whereupon Captain Mitchell proposed at once that
he sell the shop— lock, stock, and barrels— and start a new life in America.
Naught would do then but we fetch our books and ledgers, almost a-swoon
with joy and gratitude, and he paid our creditors in cash. 'Surely there's
some condition to this kindness!' Father cried, and Captain Mitchell said,
'No more than what I stated: Miss Warren is now my sister/

"Thus was the business done, with my consent. That night, when things
were calm again, I felt odd at being Elizabeth Williams, that I had envied
and despised, and wondered if I'd spoken in too great haste. Yet 'twas a
kind of pleasure too, inasmuch as Humphrey had loved Elizabeth all in
vain and now would have his love returned tenfold!

"On shipboard I was placed in Mrs. Mitchell's room, while Father was
placed with Captain Mitchell's servants in the 'tween decks. Mrs. Mitchell
was bedridden with some strange malady, but she was sweet to me. She
called me Elizabeth, and bade me do whatever her husband asked, because
he was a great good man that she could not live without. Two times a
day I gave her medicine in little phials that Captain Mitchell took from a
wooden qhest: if I was late 'twould drive her almost mad, but once she had

[ 224] THE Sdt-WEED FACTOR

her phial, she'd off to sleep at once. Captain Mitchell had a great many of
these phials, and one morning he bade me take one lest I get seasick.

" Thankee,' said I, 'but we're eight days out and I've not been seasick
yet/ Captain Mitchell then came near and put his arm about my waist,
right before Mrs. Mitchell's eyes, and said, 'Sister, ye must do as your
brother says.' And Mrs. Mitchell cried, 'Aye, aye, Elizabeth, do as your
brother says!'

"He gave a phial to me then, and to pacify them both I did as he bade
me, and chewed the brown gum inside. Ah Christ, that the first bitter taste
had killed me! Twas no medicine I took at all, but itself a malady worse
than death: 'twas opium I ate, sirs, all innocently that day!"

'"Sheart!" cried Bertiand.

'The wretch!" cried Ebenezer.

44 Twas opium kept Mrs. Mitchell to her bed and drove her mad when
'twas lacking! Twas opium led to my downfall, and my father's, and
brought me to this state ye see: a filthy trollop driving swine! God curse
the hand that raised the poppy that made the opium I ate that day! Yet I
thought 'twas simple medicine, belike a soporific, and bitter as it was, I ate
it all. Straightway I drowsed upon my feet, and the room changed sizes;
I was on the bed with Mrs. Mitchell, that grasped me by the hand, and the
Captain leaning o'er the twain of us. His head had got huge; his eyes were
afire. 'Sister Elizabeth! Sister Elizabeth!' he said. . . .

"In my dream I rose up high o'er the ship, hand in hand with Mrs.
Mitchell The sky was blue as sapphire, and the sea beneath us looked like
fine black crepe. The ship was a wee thing, clear and bright, and straight
on the horizon was the sun. Then the sun was the eye of a man, and Mrs.
Mitchell said, Tookee yonder, Elizabeth: that man is Christ Almighty,
and ye must do what he says, as thou'rt a proper Catholic girl.' We went
up near to Christ's great eye, and when He looked to us we stood naked
for his judgment.

"'Sister Elizabeth/ he said to me, 'I shall soon choose ye for a mighty
work. I mean to get a child on ye, as my Father did on Mary!' I saw myself
next in the habit of a nun, and Mrs. Mitchell called me Sister Elizabeth,
the bride o' Christ. Then Christ's voice came like a great warm wind be-
hind me, calling, 'Sister! Sister! Sister!' and while that Mrs. Mitchell held
me, I was swived.

" Twas all clear when I woke, for the face o' Jesus was Captain Mitchell's
face: I saw why Elizabeth had turned in shame from Humphrey and killed

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR t 325 I

herself with poison; I saw why Captain Mitchell called me his sister, in his
awful wickedness, and why Mrs. Mitchell had to help him in his sin. From
that day I was lost, and Captain Mitchell hid no longer his real nature.
Again and again they forced the drug upon me, till I was dreaming
half the day of Christ my lover. The craving got such hold on me, I'd have
killed any man to get my phial. Five pounds apiece he set his fee, till I had
borrowed from my father all the money Captain Mitchell had given him,
and the poor man went to Maryland a pauper. After that there was naught
for't but to sell my services for the future, a month of bondage for every
phial: I signed a blank indenture-bond for Captain Mitchell to count the
months on, and knew I was his slave and whore for life.

"All through this time I'd not seen father once, nor did I wish to.
Captain Mitchell told him I was ill and that the money was for medicine.
When all was gone the poor man near lost his mind; he begged for more
money, but Captain Mitchell bade him indent himself to the captain of
the ship, who then would sell the indenture-bond in port. My father sold
himself at first for two years, then for four, and all the money went to
Captain Mitchell for my medicine,

"One day near the end o' the passage Captain Mitchell gave his wife
two phials instead of one, and two more after that, until she died before
my eyes. Inasmuch as we had no physician, and everyone knew of the lady's
illness, she was buried at sea and no questions asked. When we raised St.
Mary's City, Father's bond was sold to a Mr. Spurdance on the Eastern
Shore, and 'tis the last I've seen o' him these five years. Captain Mitchell
moved into a fine large house in St. Mary's, and no longer did I pose as
Elizabeth Williams (save in bed), but was Susan Warren, his indentured
servant.

"I was wont to say to myself 'St. Mary's City, St. Mary's City,' and in my
opium dreams it was St. Susan's City, that I ruled over, and Christ came
down and swived me night by night. One morning Mrs. Sissly, the neighbor
woman, said, 'Miss Warren, thou'rt with child/ and I said, 'Mrs. Sissly, if I
am with child 'twas inspired by no man, but by the Holy Ghost.' But Mrs.
Sissly thought 'twas some manservant of the town I'd lain with, and told
the tale to Captain Mitchell. He fell into a rage on hearing the news, for
all he was the father; he told Martha Webb, the cook, to boil me an egg
next morning, and he put a horrid physic in't, and made me eat it all. Then
he put a towel round his neck and told Mrs. Webb he had physicked him-
self, and not to allow any visitors whilst he was a-purging. 'Twas a terrible

[ 326 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

strong physic, that had me three days purging strongly on the close-stool.
It made me ill besides, and scurvied all my body; I broke out in boils and
blains, and lost the hair off head and privates. Then the babe in my womb
was murthered dead by't, and I knew wherefore he'd given it me to

take

" What think ye now?7 he said. 'Will ye try that trick again?' And I said,
That child was holy, sir; 'twas fathered on me by Jesus in your person/
And 'Jesus Christ indeed!' said he. 'There is no such person, Sister, nor
any Holy Ghost!' And he said he was astonished that the world had been
deluded these many years by a man and a pigeon.

"Now these blasphemies were heard by Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Sissly, that
ofttimes listened outside our doors, and being both gocxj Christian women
they took the tale to the sheriff. Captain Mitchell was summoned to the
next grand jury and charged with fraud, murther, adultery, fornication,
blasphemy, and murtherous intent. I did rejoice withal, despite he had the
opium and my life would end with his.

"But, alas, I recked without the man's position, and the evil o' Maryland's
courts: Captain Mitchell was fined a sniveling five thousand pounds o' sot-
weed, whereof one third was remitted by the Governor, while I— that God
knows had endured enough-I was sentenced to thirty-nine lashes on my
suffering naked back, by the courthouse door, for leading a lewd course o9
life! They also took my master's post away— not for his wickedness, but for
his blasphemies— and freed me from my indenture. But little good that
did me, that for my next phial must indent myself again, and take another
bastinado at his hands!

"We moved then to this place in Calvert County, and my master plants
tobacco. I am more wretched than e'er before, for since the physic robbed
my beauty he'll not have me now but once in a passing while. He courts a
new girl, only lately come from London, a wee child of a thing that hath
the face of Elizabeth Williams and myself, and he treats her like a queen
the while I'm set to drive the swine. Yet he gives me still my phials, and I
well know why: 'twill not be long ere I hold her for him, while he puts
the first opium in her mouth and calls her Sister Elizabeth. I shall get
no more phials after that: I will fling myself to drown in yon Patuxent and

be well out oft, and he will have his new young sister for good and all

"God curse that man and this province!" the woman cried finally, leaning
upon her staff to weep. "Would Christ I had died while yet a maiden girl,
in my father's little coopery on the Thames!"

20: THE LAUREATE ATTENDS THE SWINE-MAIDEN
HERSELF

EBENEZER AND BERTRANB LISTENED DUMB STRUCK TO THIS TALE, WHICH

done the poet cried, "Out on't, but your master is the Devil himself!
Charles, Charles! Where is the majesty of Maryland's law, when a woman
is used so ill? I would to Heav'n my baggage were here and not God alone
knows where; then would I fetch up my sword, and this Captain Mitchell
speak nimbly!"

"Ah nay, ye dare not/' Susan warned. "Let fall but a word of what I've
said, and we're all of us dead men,"

"In that event," the Laureate said after some reflection, "he shall not
have the honor of my visit. Aye, the boor shall learn how decent folk shun
such beasts as he!"

"B'm'faith!" commented Bertrand. "Tis a fearsome punishment you
exact, sir!"

Susan straightway recommenced her weeping. " Tis done, then!" she
declared. "Tis o'er and done!"

"How's that?" the poet inquired. "What's done?"

"I," the maid replied, "for when I saw your face and heard o' your won-
drous office, my poor brain hatched a plan. But what I hatched, ye've
scotched, and 'tis done for Susan Warren."

"A plan, you say?"

The swine-girl nodded. "To make my escape and be rid o' that antichrist
my master,"

"Pray lay it open, then, that we might judge it."

"Know, then," she said, "that some time past, when Captain Mitchell
found this newest prey, I guessed my phials would soon become a burthen
to him and so, while feigning to eat the whole of the contents, in fact I laid
by a little every time and saved it in my snuffbox Of each phial I ate a
grain less and saved a grain more, till now I've near a month's worth in
reserve; and I have farther hid my one good dress, that Mrs. Sissly gave me
to be flogged in. Now I have it privily that Father's indenture is run out,
and Mr. Spurdance his master hath given him twenty acres of his own to
till on the Eastern Shore. If I can flee from this evil house I shall make my

[ 328 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

way to my father's farm and hide myself till my cure is done; then he and I
shall seek passage back to London/'

"Brave plans!" said Bertraud, whose sympathy the swine-maid's plight
had won entirely. "What can we do to aid ye?"

"Ah, sir!" wept Susan, still addressing Ebenezer. "These brave plans
were fond indeed, should I simply strike out on the road. The law goes
hard on fleeing servants, and my back thirsts not for farther stripes. What I
require to fly this sink o' Hell fore'er is but a sum of silver, that ye would
not miss; I have found a boatman that will risk flogging to sail me o'er the
Bay, but he demands his fare. Two pounds, my lord!" she cried, and greatly
disconcerted the Laureate by falling to her knees before him and embracing
his legs. "Two pounds will send me safe to my dear father! Oh, sir, refuse
me not! Think of someone ye love in these sad straits— thy sister, or some
sweetheart!"

" Tore God, I would 'twere in my power to help you," Ebenezer said,
*1>ut I am penniless. I've but this trifling ring, here, made of bone "

He drew it ruefully from his shirt to show his poverty, but at sight of it
'Susan jumped up and cried, "God save us! Whence came that ring?"

"I may not tell/' the poet replied. "Why doth the sight of it alarm you?"

"No matter," said Susan, and clutched at the fishbone ring that hung
still on its thong about the poet's neck. "It hath a certain value in the
market, and methinks the boatman will accept it for his fare."

But Ebenezer hesitated. " Twas a kind of gift," he said. "I am loath to
part with't . . ."

"Christ! Christ!" Susan wailed. "Ye will refuse me! Look ye hither, now
that fiend abuses me! Will ye send me back for more?"

She raised her tattered skirt above her knees and displayed two legs which,
wealed and welted though they were, had not been spoiled by the physic
that had uglified the rest of her. Indeed, they were quite fetching legs, the
first Ebenezer had seen since that day aboard the Cyprian.

"Ah, well, thou'rt still a woman," Bertrand said appreciatively, "and a
good wench sits upon her own best argument."

This observation brought fresh tears from Susan and a scathing look
from Ebenezer.

"I have seen harlotiy enough," she declared, "and the boatman is a man
too old to care."

^Indeed?" the valet smiled. "But my master and I are not."
"Hold thy tongue!" the poet commanded. Susan came up to him, and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 329 ]

more than ever he was moved by her strange story and her resemblance to
Joan Toast.

"Ye'd not see me beat again now, would ye, sir?" They were in sight of a
house by this time, whose lamplit windows shone across the tobacco-fields.
"Yonder there is Captain Mitchell's house; he'll take you in right gladly as
his guest, but me he will whip privily 'till he wearies of the sport."

Ebenezer had some difficulty with his voice. " Twere in sooth a pity,"
he croaked.

"I shan't allow it," the girl said softly. "If the man I loathe most in the
world hath his will o' me whene'er it please him, shall I deny the man who
delivers me from all my pain?" She fingered the fishbone ring and smiled.
"Nay, 'twere a sin if my savior took not his entire pleasure this very
night, ere I fly."

"Prithee, say no farther," Ebenezer answered, and wondered whether
she had capitalized the word savior. "My conscience would not rest were
I to stand 'twixt you and your loving father. You shall have the ring." He
slipped the rawhide thong over his head and presented her with the ring
of Quassapelagh. To his mild annoyance the swine-maiden did not imme-
diately melt with gratitude; indeed, her bearing stiffened as she took the
gift, and her smile showed a certain bitterness.

"Done, then," she said, and stuffed the ring and lanyard into a pocket of
her dress. They were at the edge of the woods, by a tobacco-field; the moon
rising over the mouth of the river whitened their faces and the flanks of the
hogs that rooted idly in the green tobacco. Susan stepped out into the field,
laid her staff on the ground between the rows, and turned to face them with
her arms akimbo.

"Now, Master Laureate of Maryland," she sighed, "come swive me in
the sot-weed and have done with't."

The poet was shocked. "'Sheart, Mrs. Warren, you misconstrue my
gesture!"

"Ah?" She tossed her uncombed hair back from her face. "Anon, then,
in the haymow by the barn? Surely thou'rt not the sort that wants a bed!"

Ebenezer stepped forward to protest. "I beg of you, madam "

" 'Tis not your servant's presence puts ye off, now, is it?" she said mock-
ingly. "Ye look the type that swives in broad daylight, let watch who will!
Would it please ye better if I feign a rape?"

"God save us," Bertrand said, "the jade hath spirit! Plague take the hour
I lost my fishbone ring!"

"Enough!" the Laureate cried. "I have no designs upon your person,

[220] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Mrs. Warren, nor do I want reward of any sort, save that you join your
father and throw off the vicious craving that hath whored you. To lay with
women is contrary to my vows, and to set a price on charity is an insult to
my principles."

This gave the swine-maid pause; she folded her arms,, turned her head
away, and dug a pensive toenail in the dirt.

"My master is a sort of rhyming priest," Bertrand explained quickly. "The
bishop, don't you know, of all the poets. But 'tis a well-known fact that the
priest's vows are not binding on his sexton, nor do my master's principles
extend to me "

"Is't principle that makes your master scorn me?" Susan interrupted, and
though her question was addressed to Bertrand it was Ebenezer she re-
garded "Or is't just my sorry state that makes him moral? He'd sing a lustier
tune, methinks, were I free of whip-scars and the smell o' pigs, and young
and sprightly as the girl Joan Toast."

'What name is this?" cried the poet. "Dear God, I thought you said
Joan Toast!"

Susan nodded affirmatively, once more dissolving into tears. "That is
the girl I spoke of, that anon will be my master's newest sister, and the
death of Susan Warren."

Ebenezer appealed to his valet. " 'Tis too fantastic, Bertrand!"

"I scarce can credit it myself, sir," Bertrand said. "Yet there is that passing
likeness, that her tale explains."

"'Tis not so strange," the girl said testily. "For all her sweet airs, this
Joan Toast was a simple whore in London not long since, and many's the
man hath known her."

"I forbid you to speak thus!" the Laureate ordered. "I hold a certain
reverence for Joan Toast; she hath a strange deep home in me, for
reasons known to none besides ourselves. Where is she, for the love of God?
We must preserve her from this Mitchell!"

"How can we?" Bertrand asked. "We've neither weapons nor money."

Ebenezer grasped the swine-maiden's arm. 'Tou must take her with you
to your father's farm!" he said. "Tell her your tale and explain the peril she
is in. Once I arrive at Maiden I shall fetch her there "

"And marry her?" asked Susan with some bitterness. "Or pimp for her
instead, and keep your vows?"

The Laureate blushed. " 'Tis not the time for speculations and conjec-
tures!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 331 ]

"In any case I cannot take her," Susan said. "I've fare for but a single
passage."

"We soon can alter that!" Bertrand laughed, and leaped to pinion both
her arms. "Snatch back the ring, sir, while I hold her!"

"You pig!" she squealed. "I'll have your ugly eyes outl"

"Nay, Bertrand," Ebenezer said, "let her go."

"This sorry jade?" cried Bertrand, laughing at her attempts to wriggle
free. "She's but a hedge-whore, sir! Snatch the ring!"

Ebenezer shook his head sadly. "Hedge-whore or no, I gave it to her in
all good faith," he said. "Besides, we do not know this boatman, nor where
Joan Toast may be. Release her."

Bertrand let go the swine-girl's arms and gave her a sportive pinch.
She squealed another curse, picked up her staff, and let fly at him a blow
that, had he not jumped clear of it, would have cost him several ribs.

"Ye'll call me a sorry hedge-whore!" she said fiercely,, and ran him off
some way across the field. Ebenezer, much more concerned about Joan
Toast than about either of them, set off with a thoughtful frown toward
the house.

"Your servant is a lecherous swine," said Susan, catching tip to him a
moment later. She brushed her hair back with her hand and prodded the
pigs to get them going. "I beg your pardon for running him off."

"He had it coming," the poet said distractedly.

"And I thank ye for respecting a gift, e'en though 'twas not all charity
that moved ye. Ye must think highly of this wench Joan Toast"

"I will do anything to save her," Ebenezer said.

"I think I can arrange it with the boatman," Susan said. "He hath no
use for me, but a fresh young tart like Joan hath ways to please the feeblest."

"Nay, I shan't allow it! I shall find some other way. Where is she?"

The swine-girl did not know where Joan Toast lived, but said she called
on Captain Mitchell nightly. "This very night he plans to giye her opium,
with my help. I shall catch her ere she comes in, if ye wish, and send her to
some privy place to meet ye."

Ebenezer agreed wholeheartedly to this plan,, and though he quailed at
the prospect of meeting Captain Mitchell, Susan persuaded him to join
the planter at supper. "The Devil himself can play the gentleman," she
said. "All men are welcome at the Captain's board, and belike he'll change
your rags for something better when he hears your tale. I'll send ye word
when Joan Toast is well hid, and lead ye to her ere I set out for my father's."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Done!" the poet exclaimed, well pleased. "I cannot fathom why she is
in Maryland, but I shall rejoice to see her!"

"And prithee, are ye sure she'll feel the same?" the swine-maid teased.
"Can any tart believe thou'rt still a virgin?"

"That doth not matter," Ebenezer declared. "No man would think me
Laureate, either, in this condition, yet Laureate I am, and virginal as well.
Marry, Susan, how I yearn to see that girl! I beg thee not to fail me!"

Susan sniffed acknowledgment and they came up to the house, a large
but ill-kept split-log dwelling. It squatted amid the fields of green tobacco
and weed-ridden garden crops, and the bare earth round about it was
malodorous with the stools of many hens.

"Methinks your master hath fallen far," Ebenezer observed, "to be re-
duced to such a dwelling."

"How's that?" the woman exclaimed. " Tis one o' the finest on the river!
Far too fine a seat for such a wicked wretch as he!"

Ebenezer made no comment, but wondered briefly whether to cast away
certain verses in his head which praised the grace of Maryland's dwellings,
or preserve them lest Susan's knowledge prove incomplete. When the
swine-girl left him in order to drive her charges back to the barn, he called
for Bertrand, who came forth hurling curses after her, and they made their
way to the front of the house.

"Pray Heav'n the wench is right about her master," Ebenezer said, and
knocked on the door.

"I would not trust the strumpet twenty paces," Bertrand grumbled. "The
man could murther us in our sleep."

The door was opened by a fleshy man in his fifties, red-nosed and chop-
whiskered, who had nonetheless an air of good breeding about his person.

"Good evening, gentlemen/' he said with a slightly mocking bow. His
clothes were fashionable, if seedy, and the excellent gravity of his voice
came partly from cultivation, Ebenezer suspected, and partly from a well-
liquored laiynx. Despite their wretched appearance he was as hospitable as
Susan had predicted: he introduced himself as Captain William Mitchell,
invited the visitors into the house most cordially, and insisted they stay the
night

"Be ye from Jail or college," he declared, "thou'rt welcome here, I swear.
Dinner's on its way, and do ye set down yonder with the rest, there's cider
to whet your hunger."

Ebenezer thanked his host and launched into an explanation of their
plight— which, however, Captain Mitchell pleasantly declined to hear, sug-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 333 ]

gesting instead that it serve to entertain the table. The guests were then
led to the dining-room, from which sounds of merriment had all along been
issuing, and were introduced to a company of half a dozen planters of the
neighborhood, among whom, to his considerable surprise, Ebenezer saw
the clip-eared old ferryman and one or two others who had stood that day
in Scotch cloth on the landing. They greeted him merrily and without
malice.

"We looked for ye to join us, Mister Cooke," one said. "Ye must forgive
Jim Keech's little prank/'

"To be sure," Ebenezer said, seeing no other position to take. "HI grant
I look more like a beggar than the Poet Laureate of Maryland, but when
you've heard what trials my man and I have suffered,, you may appreciate
our state."

"We shall, I'm sure/' the host said soothingly. "Indeed we shall." He
then sent Bertrand to eat back in the kitchen and directed Ebenezer to a
seat at the dinner table, which made up in quantity what it lacked in
elegance. Being very hungry, Ebenezer fell to at once and stuffed himself
with pone, milk, hominy, and cider-pap flavored with bacon fat and
dulcified with molasses, washing down the whole with hard cider from the
cask that stood at hand. He had, in fact, debated for a moment the wisdom
of revealing his identity, but since he had already revealed it on impulse
to the men on the landing, and since the company showed no trace of
hostility, he saw no harm in relating the whole of the story. This he pro-
ceeded to do when the meal was finished and all the guests had retired to
greasy leather couches in the parlor; he left out only the political aspects of
his capture and the adventure with Drakepecker and the Anacostin King,
whose safety he feared the tale might jeopardize. His audience attended
with great interest, especially when he came to the rape of the Cyprian —
his tongue inspired by the rum-keg in the parlor, Ebenezer spoke with
graphic eloquence of Boabdil in the mizzen-rigging and the nobly insouci-
ant ladies at the larboard rail— yet when done he saw, to his mild chagrin,
small signs of the pity and terror that he thought his tale must eyoke in the
most callous auditor: instead, the men applauded as if at some performance,
and Captain Mitchell, so far from commiserating, requested him to recite a
poem or two by way of encore.

"I fear I must decline," the Laureate said, not a little piqued. "This day
hath been fatiguing, and my voice is spent."

"Too bad our Timmy is not with us," said Jim Keech of the branded
palm. "He'd spin ye one would ferry ye 'cross the Bay!"

[ 334 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"My son Tim's no mean hand at rhymes himself/' Captain Mitchell ex-
plained to Ebenezer, "but ye might say they're of a somewhat coarser
breed."

"He is a laureate too," Jim Keech affirmed with a grin. "He calls himself
the Laureate of Lubricity, that he says means simple smut."

"Indeed?" the poet said, more out of politeness than genuine curiosity.
"I did not know our host possessed a son."

He was, in fact, preoccupied with thoughts of Joan Toast and the swine-
maiden, of whom he'd been reminded by Keech's reference to crossing
the Bay. Captain Mitchell apologized to tie group for the absence of his
popular son, who he declared had gone to do some business in St. Mary's
City and was due to return that night or the following day; it was difficult
for Ebenezer to realize that this affable country squire before him was
the monstrous villain of Susan Warren's tale, yet there were the whip-scars
on her legs, every bit as cruel as those on Drakepecker's back, and the
otherwise unaccountable resemblance between the victims of his passion.

The company now was virtually ignoring him: pipes made after the
Indian fashion had been distributed, and the room was filled with smoke
and general gossip. Knowing nothing of the crops, fish, rattlesnakes, or
personalities under discussion, irritated that his plight had not aroused more
sympathy, and weary of the long, eventful day during which he'd been a
castaway, a god, a deliverer of kings and maidens in distress, and the Poet
Laureate of Maryland, Ebenezer disengaged his attention from their re-
marks and slipped into a kind of anxious reverie: How would Joan Toast
receive him, after all? Where had she gone from his room in Pudding Lane,
and how had her fearful dudgeon led her hither? He burned to know, yet
feared the answers to these questions. The hour was growing late; soon now,
if she were not deceiving him, Susan Warren should- send word of his
rendezvous, and the prospect was in no small sense arousing. He recalled
the sight of Joan Toast in his room and of the girl he'd meant to assault
aboard the Cyprian

"Dear God in Heaven!" his thoughts cried out, and he tingled to the
marrow of his soul. The connection he'd not seen till then suffused him
with remorse and consternation: had Joan Toast somehow got aboard the
Cyprian? Was it she whom he had stalked with prurient cries, and whom
the horrid Moor . . . ?

His features waxed so rampant at this unspeakable possibility that his
host at once inquired about his health.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [335]

"Nay, sir, I beg pardon," Ebenezer managed to say. "Tis but fatigue,
I swear't!"

"To bed, then, ere ye die here in the parlor," Captain Mitchell laughed.
"I'll show ye where to sleep."

"Nay, prithee " begged the poet, afraid lest he miss his scheduled

assignation.

"Fie on your London manners, Mister Cooke!" the host insisted. "In
Maryland when a man is tired, he sleeps. Susan! Susan, ye lazy trollop, get
thee hither!"

"Ah, well, sir, if 'tis no affront to you or your gracious guests " The

swine-maiden appeared in the doorway of the parlor, answered Ebenezer's
glance with a little nod, and turned a sullen glare upon the planters, who
greeted her appearance with horny salutations.

"Show Mister Cooke here to a bedchamber," Mitchell ordered, and bade
his guest good night.

"D'ye think she'll lay for a sonnet," Jim Keech called after him, "like
that Spanish whore ye spoke of?"

"Nay, Keech," another answered. "What use hatk Susie of a laureate
poet? She hath Bill Mitchell's red boar to sport with!"

If these gross comments mortified Ebenezer they titillated him as well,
and revived the vague ardor that his late conjecture had not entirely
douched. The swine-maiden had donned her flogging-dress, which if
scarcely more elegant than the other, was at least clean, and to judge by
the smell of her she had washed herself as well. As soon as they were on the
stairs he caught her arm and whispered "Where is Joan Toast? I cannot
wait to see her!"

The woman's imperfect teeth glinted in the light of her candle. "Thou'rt
passing ardent for a virgin, Master Laureate! I fear for your vows when ye
see her in your chamber. . . ."

"My chamber? Ah, God, Mrs. Warren, 'twas in my chamber I saw her
last, as pink and naked as a lover's dream! You'd not believe how fine her
fair skin feels, or how tight and sprightly is her whole small body—ah, stay,
not all, at that: how could I forget 'the fat of her little buttocks, o'ertop the
hard young muscle? Or the softness of her breasts, that gently flattened
when she lay supine, but hung like apples of Heav'n when she bent o'er
me? I shiver at the memory!"

"Marry, thou'rt all afire, sir!" Susan said, leading the way down an up-
stairs hall. "I dare not leave the poor girl in your clutches: ye sound more
like a rapist than a priest!"

[ 536 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

She said this drily, without any real concern, but the mention of rape
was enough to calm the poet's feverish rhetoric. "I beg your pardon for
speaking thus, madam: 'tis rum, fatigue, and joy that work my tongue.
Prithee recall I never swived this girl, albeit she's everything I say and more.
I've no mind to break my vows/'

Susan paused outside a door and turned toward him so that the candle-
light flickered on her ruined face; Ebenezer regretted his thoughtless
words.

"How can ye know she still hath all her beauty?" Susan said. "I too was
pretty once, and not long since. My husband wept with joy to see my
body, and did I place his hand just so, his knees would fail him. Today
'twould make him retch/'

"Thou'rt too severe," the poet protested.

"D'ye think I cannot see what's in your mind? Ye wish I'd get me gone
posthaste, so ye might have an appetite for that heavenly fruit ye long
for. But life leaves its scars on all of us, the pure as well as the wicked,
and a pretty girl gets the worst oft. Ye've changed as well, I'll wager, since
she saw ye last"

Ebenezer rubbed his matted beard, "I am no courtier, at that," he ad-
mitted, "and I stink of dirt and wood smoke. Is there a pail hereabouts to
wash in? Ah, fie on it! Let her receive me as she will, I cannot wait to see
her! Good night to you, Mrs. Warren, and good luck. A thousand thanks
for aiding my dear Joan! Adieu, now, and bon voyage!" He moved to pass
beside her to the door.

"Nay, wait!" she pleaded.

<<Not a moment more!" He pushed past her to the door and stepped
into the chamber, which, since it looked out on the river, received some
small light from the moon but was otherwise entirely dark. "Joan Toast!"
he called softly. "Precious girl, where are you? 'Tis Eben Cooke the poet,
come to save you!"

The moonlight showed no other person in the chamber, nor was there
any answer from the shadows roundabout; when the swine-maiden came
in tearfully from the hall, her candlelight confirmed his apprehension.

"Where is she?" he demanded, and when she hung her head he shook
her roughly by the shoulders. "Have you deceived me too, you thankless
trollop? Take me to Joan Toast this instant!"

"She is not here/' the swine-girl sobbed. She set the candle down and
bolted for the hall, but Ebenezer pulled her back and closed the door.

"By Heav'n, I'll have it from thy horrid hide," he said, holding her tightly

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 337 1

from behind. "If any harm befalls Joan Toast 111 kill you!" For all his great
alarm, he could not but be conscious of Susan Warren's corsetless hips under
the sleazy cotton, and the breasts that were mashed beneath his arm. His
righteous anger thrilled him: his breath came short and hard, and he
squeezed her until she paused in her struggling to cry aloud. He wrestled
her to the bed, possessed with the urge to punish. Not having prior experi-
ence at such sport, he first laid awkward thumps about her back, at the same
time gruffly crying "Where is Joan Toast?" A moment later he held her flat
with one knee in the small of her back and commenced to spank her smartly
with the flat of his hand as though she were an errant daughter.

"She's safe!" squalled Susan. "Leave off!"

Ebenezer paused between blows, but held her fast with his knee. "Where
is she?"

"She's on her way across the Chesapeake to Dorset County, to wait for
ye at Maiden," Susan said. "The boatman said he knows the manor well."

"How's that?" Ebenezer released his hold at once and sprang to his feet,
but the swine-girl, her face pressed woefully into the quilt, macje no move
to rise. "Where did she get the fare, and how is it thou'rt not with her?"

"She was penniless/' Susan said. "I caught her on her way to borrow
money from Captain Mitchell, which had been the end o' her; but devil
the bit she'd take the ring for fare, till I told her who had giv'n it me and
whither she was to flee. Then she took it right enough, and would see you
on the instant, but I bade her make haste to find the boatman ere he
sailed."

Tears sprang to Ebenezer's eyes; with one knee on the bed he hugged
the girl's back. "God's body, and I struck you for betraying me! Forgive me,
Susan, or I shall perish of remorse! We'll find some way to save you yet, I
swear't!"

She shook her head. "The girl ye love is a fresh and comely piece, sir,
for all she hath played the whore in London; she said she had got her fill
o' men that behaved like goats, and had put by her profession ere it ruined
her. She scorned ye once when ye would not hire her, and more when ye
resolved to stay a virgin; but the farther she reflected on't the nobler ye
appeared, and when she learned her pimp had got ye sent to Maryland,
she left him straight and followed ye for very love."

"I'God! FGod! For very love!" the Laureate whispered. "But thou'rt a
saint to sacrifice thyself for her!"

"Joan Toast was worth the saving," Susan answered. "There's naught o'
Susan Warren to preserve, or I'd look to't myself. Let the poor wretch die."

[ 338 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"I shan't allow it!" Ebenezer cried. He sprang to his feet. "Thou'rt too
fine for such a fate!"

Susan sat up on the bed. "Tis not long since ye called me a horrid
trollop, and methinks ye took some joy in beating me/'

"I was a beast to touch you!" Ebenezer said. "Would God you'd give
me back my blows tenfold!"

She covered her face with her hands. "I am so ugly!"
"Not so!" the poet lied. "Thou'rt still uncommon fair, I sweart!" He
kneeled before her, embarrassed and contrite, yet still aroused, despite him-
self, from the recent tussle. "I shall confess somewhat to you for proof,"
he said. "My beating you was doubly wicked, for not only was it undeserved
but—ah God, how sinful!— I took pleasure in't, as you charged. Nor was't
a righteous pleasure, but a lustful one! The feel and sight of your— of what
I felt and saw— it fired my veins with lust. Doth that not prove you have
not lost your beauty, Susan?"

The boldness of his speech excited him further, but Susan was not
consoled. "It proves my backside's fairer than my face. That's not the praise
a woman longs to hear, I should say."

The Laureate pressed his forehead against her legs. His own knees ached
a little on the floor, and he remembered, with a shiver, that the last time he
had knelt beside a bed it was the legs of Joan Toast that he had clung
to. "What can I do to show you my esteem?"
"'Tis not esteem you feel; 'tis simple gratitude."
But Ebenezer ignored this sullen reply, for even while Susan was making
it he found an answer as if by inspiration.

"Call't what you will, 'tis great," he said. "You have sacrificed your self-
respect to save the girl I love. Very well, then: I shall sacrifice my essence
to save your self-respect!"

The swine-maiden looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"Do you understand?" Ebenezer rose to his feet, breathing so hard that
his speech came with difficulty. "So great is my esteem— that though I've
vowed to keep my innocence forever— 'tis thine in token of my gratitude.
Twill prove you have not lost your power to please a gentleman!" Trem-
bling all over, he laid his hands on her shoulders.

Susan looked up at his flushed face with alarm. "Ye wish to swive me,
sir? What will Joan Toast think, that loves ye for a virgin?"

"My chastity means more than life to me," the poet vowed, "else I'd not
presume to match it against your sacrifice. My loss is great, but subtle, and
leaves no broken hymen as its symbol. No one shall know but thee and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 339 ]

me, and I shall never tell. Come, girl," he croaked, waxing hot, "tarry no
longer! I itch fpr the combat!"

But Susan wriggled free and stepped away from him. 'Te'd deceive her,
that hath come so far for love! Haply thou'rt already not a virgin, then!"

" Tore God I am till now," he said, "and if you call this deed deceit,
then grant at least 'tis done for noble cause!"

She turned away in tears, but when, summoning every particle of his
courage, Ebenezer embraced her from behind, she offered no more protest
than to cry, "What shall I think?"

"That thou'rt yet a comely piece!" Astonished at his own temerity,
he caressed her. When even then she did not resist, her passivity fired him
with encouragement.

"Ho, here," he cried, "to the bed with you!" Dizzy with success, he gave
his tongue free rein. "I shall cleave thee with the rhymer's blade, cure thee
with the smoke of love, stuff thee with the lardoon of Parnassus, baste and
infuse thee with the muse's nectar, and devour thee while thou'rt yet
aquiver!"

"Nay, prithee," Susan said, "ye've proved your point!"

"And now shall press and ply it like St. Thomas," Ebenezer said, "till
my virgin quill hath writ a very Summa!"

" 'Twere cruel to feign such passion out of gratitude, and wicked to cheat
Joan Toast!" She offered real resistance now, but Ebenezer would not re-
lease her.

"Then call me cruel and wicked when thou'rt swivedl" He pushed her
onto the bed.

" 'Twill be a common rape!" she squealed.

"So be't!"

"Not here, then! 'Sheart, not here!"

"Why not, pray?" asked the poet; he paused with his innocence, as it
were, at the ready.

"Some women take a man without a sound," the swine-girl said, averting
her eyes, "but I cannot; whether 'tis a wooing or what have ye, I must
hollow like a rutting cat, and flail about."

"So much the better," Ebenezer said.

" 'Twill bring the household running Stop, I warn ye!"

"They are no canting Puritans, methinks— hold still, there!"

"Then swive me, damn ydur eyes!" Susan cried, and gave up struggling
altogether. "Break your vow, cheat Joan Toast, let Captain Mitchell come

[ 34° 1 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

a-running when I scream! He'll laugh to see't, and beat me later for't, and
tell the tale all up and down the Province!"

This possibility gave the Laureate pause. He released his grip on the
woman's arms, and she took the opportunity to move aside and sit up.

"I'll throttle you if I must/' he said, but the threat was more surly than
sincere.

"Ye needn't," Susan grumbled. "Slack off, now, ere ye take a lover's pain,
and meet me in the barn anon."

"Get on with't. I'm not so gullible! We'll go together."

But Susan explained that they were sure to be seen leaving the house,
and the scandal would be the same.

"I'll go there now," she said, "and you come half an hour behind. Then
ye may play the two-backed beast to your heart's content with no one save
my swine to hear me."

And on this ambiguous pledge she left, before the poet could catch her.

<*$ 21: THE LAUREATE YET FURTHER ATTENDS THE
SWINE-MAIDEN

A VERY FEW MINUTES AFTER SUSAN WARREN'S DEPARTURE BERTRAND

entered the Laureate's chamber and found his master pacing furiously
about, sighing and smacking his fist into his hand.

" 'Sbody, how these scoundrels eat!" the valet said. His voice was thick
and his stance unsteady. " Tis coarse, I'll grant, but copious."

"Methinks you more than quenched your thirst as well," Ebenezer ob-
served uncordially. "What is't you want?"

"Why, nothing that I know of, sir. What I mean, they said I was to sleep
here."

"Sleep, then, and be damned to you. There's the bed."

"Ah, sir, 'tis thine, not mine. Only let me have that quilt; I'll want no

more."

Ebenezer shrugged and went to the window; unfortunately he could
not see the barn from there. His valet spread the quilt on the floor, flopped
heavily upon it, and sighed a mighty sigh. " 'Tis not the same as being god
in a golden town," he declared, patting his stomach, "but 'twill do for the
nonce, i'faith! I wonder how our man Drakepecker fares?" When he saw

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 341 ]

no answer was forthcoming he sighed once more, turned on his side, and in
a trice fell fast asleep.

His master, less tranquil, cracked his knuckles and clucked his tongue;
debating what to do. At Susan Warren's first distraction his mad impulse
had faltered, and upon her departure from the room it had foundered al-
together. He was at sixes and sevens. Twice now he had come within an
ace of fornication— worse, of meaningless rape— and his integrity had been
preserved by chance, through outside agencies. The girl in the Cyprian's
rigging had been assaulted and was helpless; the Warren woman had been
assaulted and was coarse and ugly in the face; both were objects not for
passion but for pity, and what resemblance they bore to Joan Toast, so far
from serving as an excuse for his inexcusable behavior, was further indict-
ment of it. All this he saw clearly, and remembered as well the relief and
shame he had felt a fortnight since, after fate had fetched him from the
mizzen ratlines. To go now to the barn would be to cheat the girl who,
incredibly, had come half around the world for love of a man never smiled
on thitherto by any woman save his sister, and to sacrifice besides a good
moiety of his essence to a ruined tart between him and whom no love was
lost, and who would contemn the deed as much as he. Yet he also saw, and
could not fathom, that in his heart the question still lay open.

" 'Tis too absurd!" he thought, and flung himself angrily upon the bed
where they had grappled. "I shall think of it no more." He regarded
Bertrand with envy, but sleep, for him, was out of the question: his fancy
burned with images of the swine-maiden suffering his punishments and
molestations, confessing with averted eyes how noisily she wooed,, and wait-
ing for him at that moment in the barn. On the scales of Prudence one
pan lay empty, while Reason's entire weight tipped down the other; what
dark force, then, on the scales of Choice, effected counterbalance?

While thus he lay debating, his valet, though asleep, was by no means at
rest His innards commenced to growl and snarl like beagles at a grounded
fox; the hominy and cider in him foamed and effervesced; anon there came
salutes to the rising moon, and the bedchamber filled with the perfume of
ferment. The author of these delights snored roundly, but his master was
not so fortunate; indeed, he had at length to flee the room, ears ringing,
head a-spin, and the smart of bumbolts in his eyes. The guests were still
carousing in the parlor; Ebenezer gathered from what he could hear that
the host's son Timothy had returned and was regaling them with indelicate
verses. He slipped out to the front porch unobserved to breathe the cool

[ 342 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

air moving off the river, and from that way-station soon enough strolled
bamwards, deaf to the judgment of his conscience.

The moon shed light to walk by in the yard, but the inside of the barn
was black as Chaos. He thought of calling Susan, but decided not to.

"I shall approach in silence, and clip her like a brigand in the dark!"

This was a thrilling fancy: he pricked up at every rustle in the barn,
and the cramps of love like hatching chicks bid fair to burst their prisons.
What's more, six stealthy paces in the dark were enough to stir his bladder
past ignoring; he was obliged to relieve himself then and there before going
farther.

"God aideth those that aid themselves,9' he reflected.

But unlike Onan, who hit no noisier target than the ground, the hapless
Laureate chanced to strike a cat, a half-grown torn not three feet distant
that had looked like a gray rock in the dark. And like the finger-flick of
Descartes' God, which Burlingame once spoke of, this small shot in the
dark set an entire universe in motion! The mouser woke with a hiss and
flew with splayed claws at the nearest animal— fortunately not Ebenezer
but one of Susan's shoats. The young pig squealed, and soon the barn was
bleating with the cries of frightened animals. Ebenezer himself was terri-
fied, at first by the animals, whose number and variety he had not suspected,
and then lest the din, now amplified by barking dogs outside, arouse the
household. When he jumped back, holding up his breeches in one hand,
he happened upon a stick leaning against the wall— possibly Susan's staff.
Me snatched it up, at the same time crying "Susan! Susan!" and laid about
him vigorously until the combatants ran off— the shoat into the cow stalls
and the cat into a corner whence had come some sound of poultry. A
moment later the respite ended: the barn was filled with quacks and
squawks; ducks, geese, and chickens beat the air wildly in their effort to
flee the cat, and Ebenezer suffered pecks about the head and legs as
bird after bird encountered him. This new commotion was too much for
the dogs, a pair of raucous spaniels: they bounded in from the yard in
pursuit of what they took to be a fox or a weasel preying on the poultry,
and for all the Laureate thrashed around him with his stick, they ran him
from the barn and treed him in a poplar near the closest tobacco-shed.
There they held him at bay for some fifteen minutes before trotting off to
sleep, their native lack of enthusiasm overcoming their brief ambition.

As yet the poet had seen no sign of Susan Warren, and he began to fear
she had deceived him after all. He resolved to descend and try the barn
once more, both to verify his suspicions and to take cover from the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 343 ]

mosquitoes, which were raising welts all over his face and ankles; but as he
was climbing down he heard a noise like a buzz or rattle in the grass. Was
it only a common cricket, or was it one of those snakes Mr. Keech had
described during supper? The notion of descent lost all its charm, and
though he heard the sound no more, and the mosquitoes were no less
hungry, he remained a good while longer in the tree, too frightened even
to compose an indignant Hudibrastic.

He might, in fact, have still been there at sunup— for on the heels of
Fear, like a tart behind her pimp, came the shame he knew would embrace
him soon or late, and Shame brought her gaunt-eyed sister-whore Despair
—but at length he heard some man at the back of the house say "No more,
now, Susan; good night and get ye gone!" Then the house door closed,
and a cloaked form crossed the distant yard and entered the barn.

"That scoundrel Mitchell had her in the parlor!" Ebenezer thought, and
recalled the coarse familiarity with which the planter had saluted her. "She
was accosted as she left and put to some lewd entertainment, and only now
hath managed to escape!"

This conjecture, so far from filling him with pity, revived his ardor at
once, as had the plight of the Cyprian women; quietly and cautiously he
slid down from the poplar and stalked through the tall grass to the bam,
expecting at any moment to feel the fangs of the viper in his heel. Arriving
safely at the doorway, he entered without a sound and saw inside only the
faintest of gleams from a shaded lantern.

"Hssst!" he whispered, and "Hssst!" came the reply. Ebenezer heard a
labored respiration, unmistakably human, just down the wall from where
he stood, and so resolved to call no more, but execute his original plan of
surprise assault. Very carefully he crept toward his prey, whose location in
the pigpen he fixed easily by her heavy breathing and the rustle of restless
swine in her vicinity. Only when he judged himself virtually upon her did
he croon "Susie, Susie, me doxy, me dove!" at the same time clutching
amorously at her form.

Bare legs he felt, and hams, but

"Heav'n upon earth, what's this?"

"What is't, indeed?" a man's voice cried, and after a short struggle the
poet found himself pinned face down in the sour straw of the pen. His
would-be victim sat upon his back and held his arms; sows, hogs, and shoats
snuffled nervously together at the far end of the enclosure. "Ye thought me
your doxy, your dove, now, did ye? What knave are ye, sir?"

[ 344 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Prithee, let me but explain!" Ebenezer pleaded. "I am Captain

Mitchell's guest!"

"Our guest! What way is this to return our hospitality? Ye^dnnk our
cider and eat our hominy and then ye think to swive my Portia!"

"Portia? Who is Portia?"

"The same my father calls Susie. Til wager he put ye up to this!"

The Laureate's heart sank. "Your father! Then thou'rt Tim Mitchell?"

"The same. And which ungrateful wretch are you?"

"I am Ebenezer Cooke, sir, Poet and Laureate of the Province of
Maryland "

"Nay!" said Mitchell, clearly impressed, and to Ebenezer's great sur-
prise he released his hold at once. "Sit up, sir, please, and forgive my rude
behavior; 'twas but concern for my Portia's chastity."

"I—I quite forgive you," the poet said. He sat up hastily, wondering at
the fellow's words. Tim Mitchell, to judge by his voice, was a man of Ebene-
zer's age at least; how could he speak of Susan's chastity? "I believe thou'rt
having a jest at my expense, Mr. Mitchell, are you not?"

"Or you at mine," the other man sighed. "Ah well, ye've caught us fair,
and Portia's life is in your hands."

"Her life! She's here, then, in this pen?"

"Of course, sir; over yonder with the rest. I beg ye not to speak a word
to Father!"

"Marry!" the poet cried. "What madness is this, Mister Mitchell? Explain
yourself, I beg you!"

The other man sighed. " 'Tis just as well I did, for if ye mean to ruin us,
ye will, and if thou'rt a gentleman, perchance ye'll leave us in peace."

"Thou'rt in love with Susan?" Ebenezer asked incredulously.

"Aye and I am," Tim Mitchell replied, "and have been since the day I
saw her. Her name is really Portia, Mister Cooke; 'tis Father calls her Susie,
after a whore of a mistress he once had. He regards her as his property, sir,
and treats her like a beast! Should he learn the truth of our love there
would be no end to his wrath!"

Ebenezer^s brain spun dizzily. "Dear Mister Mitchell "

, 'The blackguard!" Timothy went on, his voice unsteady. "Till he hath
got that new wench in his power, he comes out eveningly to poor sweet
Portia, whose maidenhead he claimed when she was yet a shoat too young
to fend him off."

Ebenezer could not but admire the metaphor of the shoat, and yet

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 345 ]

there were obvious discrepancies between the accounts of Susan's past. "I
do declare," he protested, "this is not "

"There is no limit to the man's poltroonery/' Timothy hissed. "Albeit
he is my father, sir, I loathe him like the Devil! Say naught of this, I beg ye,
for in his wickedness, did he know aught of our love, he would give her to
the lecherous boar in yonder pen, that e'er hath looked on her with lewd
intent, and let him take his slavering will o' her/'

Ebenezer gasped. "You do not mean to say "

But even as the truth dawned on him, young Mitchell called "Portia!
Hither, Portia! Soo-ieF and an animal shuffled over from the far wall in
the dark.

"Lookee there, how gentle!" Tim said proudly.

"Out on't!" the Laureate whispered.

"Think o' her as your own dear sister, sir: would ye consign her to be
ravished by a filthy beast?"

"I would not," Ebenezer exclaimed, "and I am affronted by the
analogy! In sooth I cannot tell who's beastlier, the buggerman or the boar;
'tis the viciousest vice I e'er encountered!"

Timothy Mitchell's voice reflected more disappointment than intimidar
tion at the outburst. "Ah, sir, no amorous practice is itself a vice— can ye
be in sooth a poet and not see that? Adultery, rape, deceit, unfair seduction—
'tis these are vicious, not the coupling of parts: the sin is not in the act,
but in the circumstances."

Ebenezer wished he could see this curious moralist's face. "What you
say may well be true, but you speak of men and women "

"Shame on a poet that hearkens so lightly!" Timothy chided. " Twas
male and female I spoke of, not men and women."

"But such a foul, unnatural jointure!"

Timothy laughed. "Methinks Dame Nature's not so nice as thee, sir. I
grant ye that a rabbit-hound in heat seeks out a bitch to mate with, but
doth he care a fig be she turnspit or mastiff? Nay, more, by Heav'n, he'll
have at any partner, be't his bitch, his brother, or his master's boot! His
urge is natural, and hath all nature for its target—with a hound-bitch at
the bulls-eye, so to speak. I have seen yonder spaniels humping sheep. . . ."

Ebenezer sighed. "The face of buggery hath yet a sinful leer, for all the
paint and powder of your rhetoric. These poor dumb creatures are be-
trayed by accident, but man hath light enough to see Dame Nature's
plan."

"And sense enough to see it hath no object, save to carry on the species,"

[ 346 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Timothy added. "And wit enough to do for sport what the beasts do willy-
nilly. I have no quarrel with women, Master Poet: 'tis many a maid I've
loved ere now and doubtless shall again. But just as Scripture tells us that
death is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, so Boredom, methinks, is the
fruit of Wit and Fancy. A new mistress lies upon her back at night in a
proper chamber, and her lover is content. But anon this simple pleasure
palls, and they set about to refine their sport: from Aretine they learn the
joy of sundry stoops and stances; from Boccaccio and the rest they learn to
woo by the light o' day, in fields and wine butts and chimney corners;
from Catullus and the naughty Greeks they learn There are more ways to
the 'woods than one, and more woods than one to be explored by every way.
If they have wit and daring there is no end to their discovery, and if they
read as well, they have the amorous researches of the race at their disposal:
the pleasures of Cathay, of Moors and Turks and Africans, and the cleverest
folk of Europe. Is this not the way oft, sir? When men like us become
enamored of a woman, we fall in love with every part and aspect; we cannot
rest till we know with all our senses every plain and secret part of our
beloved, and then we gnash our teeth that we cannot go beneath her skin!
I am no great poet like you, sir, but 'twas just this craving I once turned
into verse, in this manner:

"Let me taste of thy Tears,

And the Wax. of thine Ears;
Let me drink of thy Body's own Wine "

"Eh! 'Sheart! Have done ere you gag me!" Ebenezer cried. "Thy body's
own wine! Ne'er have I heard such verses!7'

"Thou'rt a stranger to Master Barnes, then, the sonneteer? He longed to
be the sherry in his mistress's glass, that she might curl him in her tongue,
warm her amorous blood with him, and piss him forth anon. . . ."

'There is a certain truth in all of this you tell me," Ebenezer admitted.
"I'll grant you farther that were I not resolved to chastity— nay, do not
laugh, sir, 'tis true, as ITI explain in time— were I not resolved to chastity, I
say, but had me a mistress like the lot of men, I should feel this urge you
speak of, to know her in every wise, saving only her 'body's own wine' and
such like liquors, that can stay in her distillery for all I'll quaff 'em! There's
naught unnatural in this: 'tis but the lover's ancient wish that Plato speaks
of, to be one body with his beloved; and with poets in especial 'tis not to be
wondered at, forasmuch as love and woman are so oft the stuff of verse.
Yet 'tis no mean leap from Petrarch's Laura, or even Barnes's thirsty
wench, to your fat sow Portia here!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 347 ]

"On the contrary, sir, 'tis no leap at all," Tim said. "You have already
pled my case. Your Socrates had Xanthippe to warm his bed, but he took
his sport with the young Greek lads as well, did he not? Ye say that women
are oft the stuff o' poetry, but in fact 'tis the great wide world the poet sings
of: God's whole creation is his mistress, and he hath for her this selfsame
love and boundless curiosity. He loves the female body— Heav'n knows!—
the little empty space between her thighs he loves, that meet to make
sweet friction lower down; and the two small dimples in the small o' her
back, that are no strangers to his kiss/'

41 Tis quite established," Ebenezer said, his blood roused up afresh, "the
female form is wondrous to behold!"

"But shall it blind ye to the beauty of the male, sir? Not if ye've Plato's
eyes, or Shakespeare's. How comely is a well-formed man! That handsome
cage of ribs, and the blocky muscles of his calves and thighs; the definition
of his hands, ridged and squared with veins and tendons, and more pleasing
than a woman's to the eye; the hair of his chest, that the nicest sculptors
cannot render; and noblest of all,, his manhood in repose! What contrast to
that sweet unclutteredness of women! The chiefest fault of the sculpting
Greeks, methinks, is that their marble men have the parts of little boys:
'tis pederastic art, and I abhor it. How wondrous, had they carved the living
truth, that folk in ancient times were wont to worship— the very mace and
orbs of kingly power!"

"I too have admired men on occasion," Ebenezer said grudgingly, "but
my flesh recoils at the thought of amorous connection!" His unseen partner's
words, in fact, had recalled to him the indignities which he had suffered
more than three months earlier in the Poseidon's fo'c'sle.

"Then more's the pity," Tim said lightly, "for there's much to be said of
men in verse. Marry, sometimes I wish I had a gift with words, sir, or some
poet had my soul: what lines I would make about the bodies of men and
women! And the rest of creation as well!" Ebenezer heard him patting
• Portia. "Great rippling hounds, sleek mares, or golden cows— how can men
and women rest content with little pats for such handsome beasts? I, I love
them from the last recesses of my soul; my heart aches with passion for their
bodies!"

"Perversity, Mr. Mitchell!" the Laureate scolded. "You've parted com-
pany now with Plato and Shakespeare, and with every other gentleman as
well!"

"But not with mankind," Timothy declared. "Europa, Leda, and Pasip^ae
are my sisters; my offspring are the Minotaur, and the Gorgons, and the

[ 34$ ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Centaurs, the beast-headed gods of the Egyptians, and all the handsome
royalty of the fairy tales, that must be loved in the form of toads and
geese and bears. I love the world, sir, and so make love to it! I have sown
my seed in men and women, in a dozen sorts of beasts, in the barky boles
of trees and the honeyed wombs of flowers; I have dallied on the black
breast of the earth, and clipped her fast; I have wooed the waves of the
sea, impregnated the four winds, and flung my passion skywards to the
stars!"

So exalted was the voice in which this confession was delivered that
Ebenezer shrank away, as discreetly as he could, some inches farther from
its author, who he began to fear was mad.

" Tis a most— most interesting point of view," he said.

"I was sure 'twould please ye/' Timothy said. "Tis the only way for a
poet to look at the world/'

"Ah, well, I did not say I share your catholic tastes!"

"Come now, sir!" Timothy laughed. "Twas not in your sleep ye came
here calling Susiel"

Ebenezer made a small mumble of protest; he did not, on the one hand,
care to let Timothy believe that the Laureate of Maryland shared his vicious
lust for livestock, but on the other hand he was not prepared to reveal the
true reason for his presence in the barn.

"Thou'rt too much the gentleman to molest her now," Tim went on.
Ebenezer heard him moving closer and retreated another step.

"Twas all an error of judgment!" he cried, tingling with shame. "I can
explain it all!"

"Wherefore? D'ye think I mean to ruin your name, when ye have spared
my Portia? Susan Warren told me all, and I bade her wait for ye; I'll lead ye
straight to her, and ye may sport the night away." He caught up before
Ebenezer could run and grasped his upper arm.

"Tis more than kind," the Laureate said apprehensively, "but I've no

wish to go at all. I really am a virgin, I sweart, for all my ill designs on

Susan Warren; 'twas some sudden monstrous passion overcame me, that I

am most ashamed of now." Again, and bitterly, he remembered his

own ill treatment on the Poseidon. "Thank Heav'n I was delayed till

prudence cooled my ardor, else I'd done myself and her an equal wrong!"

"Then you really are a virgin yet?" Tim asked softly, tightening his grip

on the poet's arm. "And ye still mean to remain one, come what may?"

He spoke in a voice altogether different from the one he'd used until

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 349 ]

then; it raised the Laureate's hackles, and so drained him with surprise that
he could not speak.

" Twas not easy to believe," the new voice added. 'That's why I said
I'd take you to 'the swine-girl."

"I cannot believe my ears!" the poet gasped.

"Nor could I mine, when Mitchell told me of his dinner guesl Shall we
trust our eyes any better?"

He removed the lantern shade completely: in the yellow flare, which
drew the slow attention of the swine, Ebenezer saw not the bearded, black-
haired "Peter Sayer" Burlingame of Plymouth—though this had been in-
credible enough!— but the well-dressed, smooth-shaven, periwigged tutor of
St. Giles in the Fields and London.

22: NO GROUND IS GAINED TOWARDS THE
LAUREATE'S ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE, BUT NEITHER
IS ANY LOST

ONCE, OR TWICE, OR THRICE I AM DECEIVED?" THE POET EX-

claimed. "Is't Burlingame that stands before me now, or was't Burlingame
I left in Plymouth? Or are the twain of you impostors?"

"The world's a happy climate for imposture," Burlingame admitted with
a smile.

"You were so much altered when I saw you last, and now you've altered
back to what you were!"

" Tis but to say what oft I've said to you ere now, Eben: your true and
constant Burlingame lives only in your fancy, as doth the pointed order of
the world. In fact you see a Heraclitean flux: whether 'tis we who shift
and alter and dissolve; or you whose lens changes color, field, and focus; or
both together. The upshot is the same, and you may take it or reject it."

Ebenezer shook his head.. "In sooth you are the man I knew in London.
Yet I cannot believe Peter Sayer was a fraud!"

Burlingame shrugged, still holding the lantern. "Then say he hath
shaved his hair and beard since then, as doth my version of the case, and
no longer affects a tone of -voice like this!9 He spoke these last words in
the voice Ebenezer remembered from Plymouth. "If you'd live in the world,

[ sec ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

my friend, you must dance to some other fellow's tune or call your own
and try to make the whole world step to't"

"That's why I'm loath to strike out on the floor"— Ebenezer laughed—
"though I came very near to't this night."

Henry laid his hand on the poet's shoulder. "I know the story, friend,
and the whore hath fleeced you for the nonce. But I'll get your two pounds
from her by and by."

"No matter," the poet smiled ruefully. "'Twas but a worthless ring I
gave her, and I bless the hour she foiled my lecherous plan." The mention
of it recalled his friend's recent discourse in the dark, and he blushed and
laughed again. " 'Twas for a tease you feigned that passion for a pig, and
all the rest!"

"Not a bit oft," Henry declared. "That is to say, I have no special love
for her, but she is in sooth a tasty flitch, despite her age, and many's the

.•^_ 19

time

"Stay, you tease me yet!"

"Think what you will," said Burlingame. "The fact is, Eben, I share your
views on innocence/'

So surprised and pleased was Ebenezer to hear this confession that he
embraced his friend with both arms; but Burlingame's response was a move-
ment so meaningful that the poet cried out in alarm and retreated at once,
shocked and hurt.

"What I mean to say," Henry continued pleasantly, "is that I too once
clung to my virginity, and for the selfsame cause you speak of in your poem.
Yet anon I lost it, and so committed me to the world; 'twas then I
vowed, since I was fallen from grace, I would worship the Serpent that
betrayed me, and ere I died would know the taste of every fruit the garden
grows! How is't, d'you think, I made a conquest of a saint like Henry More?
And splendid Newton, that I drove near mad with love? How did I get
my post with Baltimore, and wrap good Francis Nicholson around my
finger?"

"'Sheart, you cannot mean they all are "

"Nay," said Henry, anticipating the objection. "That is, they scarcely
think so. But ere I was twenty I knew more of the world's passions than did
Newton of its path in space. No end of experimenta lay behind me; I
could have writ my own Principia of the flesh! When Newton set his weights
and wires a-swing, did they know what forces moved them as he chose? No
more than Newton knew, and Portia here— to name no others— what wires

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ JJ1 ]

of nerve and amorous springs I triggered, to cause whate'er reaction I
pleased."

The Laureate was sufficiently astonished by these revelations so that be-
fore he could assimilate them Henry changed the subject to one more ap-
parently relevant: their separate crossings from Plymouth and their present
positions. He had, he declared, successfully deceived Captains Slye and
Scurry into believing that he was John Coode, and in that role had ac-
companied them to Maryland, confirming in the process Coode's leadership
of a sizable two-way smuggling operation: under the rebel's direction,
numerous shipmasters ran Maryland tobacco duty-free to New York, for
example, whence Dutch confederates marketed it illegally in Curagao,
Surinam, or Newfoundland; or they would export it to the Barbados, where
it was transferred from bogheads to innocent-looking boxes and smuggled
into England; or they would run it directly to Scotland. On return trips they
imported cargoes from foreign ports directly into Maryland by the simpler
device of bribing the local collectors with barrels of rum and crates of scarce
manufactured goods.

" Tis in this wise/' he said, "Coode earns a large part of the money
for his grand seditious plots, though he doubtless hath other revenues as
well." He went on to assert that from all indications the conspirator planned
a coup d'6tat, perhaps within a year; various of Slye's and Scurry's remarks
left little doubt of that, though they gave no hint of the agency through
which the overthrow was to be effected.

"Then how is it thou'rt here and not on Nicholson's doorstep?" asked
the Laureate. "We must inform him!"

Burlingame shook his head. "We are not that certain of his own fidelity,
Eben, for all his apparent honesty. In any case 'twould scarcely make him
more alert for trouble than he is already. But let me finish." He told how
he had surreptitiously disembarked from Slye and Scurry's ship at
Kecoughtan, in Virginia, lest the real Coode be present at their landing
in St. Mary's, and had crossed to Maryland in his present disguise— or guise,
if Ebenezer preferred— only a few weeks ago. Inquiring after the Poseidon
in St. Mary's, he had learned, to his horror, of the Laureate's abduction
by pirates.

" 'Sbody, how I did curse myself for not having sailed with you!" he
exclaimed. "I could only presume the wretches had done you in, for one
cause or another "

"Prithee, Henry," Ebenezer interrupted, "was't you that posed as
Laureate, somewhile after?"

[252] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Burlingame nodded. "You must forgive me. Twas but your name I used,
on a petition: I thought me how you'd died ere you had the chance to
serve your cause, and how old Coode would rejoice to hear't. Then Nichol-
son declared he meant to move the government from St. Mary's to Anne
Arundel Town, to take the Papish taint off it, and some men in St. Mary's
sent round a petition of protest. I saw Coode's name on't and so affixed
yours as well, to confound him/*

"Dear friend!" Tears came to Ebenezer's eyes. "That simple act was
near the death of mel"

Astonished, Burlingame asked how, but Ebenezer bade him conclude
his narration, after which he would tell the story of his own eventful pas-
sage from Plymouth to where they now sat in the straw.

"There's little more to tell," Henry said. "They had put your trunk away
against the time when 'twill go up for lawful sale, but I contrived to gain
possession of your notebook "

"Thank Heav'n!"

"How many tears I shed upon your poems! I have't in the house this
minute, but I little dreamed I'd ever see its owner again."

While still in St. Mary's, he said, he heard that Coode had learned of
the grand deception and was so enraged that he had barred Slye and Scurry
from the lucrative smuggling run to punish them. In fact, fearful of traps
set by the unknown spy, Coode had been obliged to suspend virtually all
smuggling operations in the province for a while: His Majesty's tobacco
revenues had seldom been so high.

"I knew the blackguard must needs find some new income," Henry went
on, "and so I followed him as close as e'er I could. In this wise I discovered
Captain Mitchell: he is one of the chief est agents of sedition, and his house
is oft the rebels' meeting place."

"I'm not a whit surprised, from what I've heard," said Ebenezer, and
then suddenly blanched. "But i'God, I gave him my name, and told him
the entire story of my capture!"

Burlingame shook his head in awe. "So he told me when I came in,
and thou'rt the luckiest wight in all of Maryland, I swear. He thought the
twain of you mad and took you in for his dinner guests' amusement.
Tomorrow he'd have turned you out, and if he dreamed for a minute you
were really Eben Cooke, 'twould be the death of you both, I'm certain."

Returning to his story, he told of his investigation of Mitchell, which
had produced two useful pieces of information: the man was instrumental
in some sinister new scheme of Coode's, and he had one son, Timothy,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 353 ]

whom he'd left behind in England four years previously to complete his
education, and who was therefore unknown in Maryland.

"I resolved at once to pose as Mitchell's son: I had seen his portrait
hanging in the house, and 'twas not so far unlike me that four years of
studious drinking couldn't account for the difference. E'en so, for prudence's
sake, I forged Coode's name on a letter to Mitchell, which said Son Tim
was now in Coode's employ and was coming home to do a job of work
for's father. Tis e'er Coode's wont to send a cryptic order, and de'il the
bit you question what it means! I followed close on the letter and declared
myself Tim Mitchell, come from London. It mattered not a fart then
whether the Captain believed me to be his son or Coode's agent: when
he questioned me I smiled and turned away, and he questioned me no
more. Yet what the plot is, I've yet to learn."

"Mayhap it hath to do with opium," Ebenezer suggested, and to Bur-
lingame's sharp look said in defense, " Twas what he ruined the swine-girl
with, and murthered his wife as well." Briefly he recounted Susan Warren's
tale, including the wondrous coincidence of Joan Toast's presence and
Susan's noble sacrifice to save her. All through the little relation, however,
Burlingame frowned and shook his head.

"Is't aught short of miraculous?" the poet demanded.

" Tis too much so," said Henry. "I've no wish to be o'erskeptical, Eben,
or to dissapoint your hopes; the wench herself is ruined with opium, I
grant, and it may be all she says is true as Scripture. But yonder by the
river stands a pair of gravestones, side by side; the one's marked Pauline
Mitchell and the other Elizabeth Williams. And I swear the name of Joan
Toast hath not been mentioned in this house— at least in my hearing. The
only wench I've known him to woo is Susie Warren herself, that we all
have had our sport with now and again. Nor haye I seen a phial of opium
hereabouts, albeit he may well feed her privily. Methinks she heard of
Joan Toast from your valet— his tongue is loose enough. As for the rest,
'twas but a tale to wring some silver from you; when it failed she feigned
that sacrifice you spoke of, in hopes of doing better the second time. Didn't
you say she was in the kitchen with your valet all through supper?"

"So she was," Ebenezer admitted. "But it seems to me she "

"Ah well," laughed Henry, "thou'rt no more gulled than Susan, in the
last account, and if Joan Toast's here we'll find her. But tell me now of
your own adventures: i'faith, you've aged five years since last I saw you!"

"With cause enough," sighed Ebenezer, and though he was still preoc-
cupied with thoughts of Joan Toast, he related as briefly as he could the

[ 354 1 TBE SOT-WEED FACTOR

tale of his encounter with Bertrand aboard the Poseidon, the loss of his
money through the valet's gambling, his ill-treatment at the hands of the
crew, and their capture by Thomas Pound. At every new disclosure Bur-
lingame shook his head or murmured sympathy; at the mention of Pound
he cried out in amazement— not only at the coincidence, but also at the
implication that Coode had enlisted the support of Governor Andros of
Virginia, by whom Pound was employed to guard the coast.

"And yet 'tis not so strange, at that," he said on second thought. "There's
no love lost 'twixt Andros and Nicholson any more. But fancy you in
Pound's clutches! Was that great black knave Boabdil still in his crew?"

"First mate," the poet replied with a shudder. "Dear Heav'n, what
horrors he wrought aboard the Cyprian! The very wench I spoke of, that
I climbed to in the mizzen-rigging, he had near split like an oyster. How
it pleased me that she gave the fiend a poxl"

"You had near got one yourself," Burlingame reminded him soberly.
"And not just once, but twice. Did ye see the rash on Susan Warren's skin?"

"But you yourself "

"Have had some sport with her," Henry finished. "But I know more
sports than one to play with women." Awed, he rubbed his chin. "I have
heard before of whore-ships, and thought 'twas a sailors' legend."

Ebenezer went on to tell of the collusion between Pound and Captain
Meech of the Poseidon, postponing mention of John Smith's secret diary
until later, and concluded with the story of their execution, survival, and
discovery of Drakepecker and Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King.

"This is astounding!" Henry cried. "Your Drakepecker is an African

slave, I doubt not, but this Quassapelagh D'you know who he is,

Eben?"

"A king of the Piscataways, he said."

"Indeed so, and a disaffected one! Last June he murthered an English
wight named Lysle and was placed in the charge of Colonel Warren,, in
Charles County, that was still a loyal friend of Coode's. This Warren set
the salvage free one night, for some queer cause or other, and was demoted
f or't, but they never saw Quassapelagh after that. The story was that he's
trying to inflame the Piscataways against Nicholson."

" Twere a dreadful thing, if true," the Laureate said, "but I must vouch
for the man himself, Henry; I would our Maryland planters had the half
his nobility. Yet stay, tell me this ere I say another word: what have you
learned of Sir Henry Burlingame, your ancestor?"

Burlingame sighed. "No more than I knew in Plymouth. Do you recall

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR I 355 1

I said the Journal was parceled out to sundry Papist Smiths? Well, the first
of these was Richard Smith, right here in Calvert County, that is Lord
Baltimore's surveyor general. As soon as I was established here and had re-
vealed myself to Nicholson, I set out to collect the various portions,, so
that Cobde and all his cohorts could be prosecuted. But when I reached
Dick Smith and gave him the Governor's password "

"He told you Coode had long since got his portion by some ruse,"
Ebenezer laughed.

" Tis a thin joke, 'sheart! Dick Smith had tried to help some Papist
friends of his by making 'em deputy surveyors, and after Governor Copley
died, Coode saw his chance to raise a cry of Popery and turn Smith's
property inside out. How did you hear of it?"

Ebenezer withdrew from his pocket the few folded pages of the diary
that remained to him. "How should I not learn something of intrigue
myself, with such a marvelous tutor? You'll see naught here to read, but
these are pages from the document you speak of."

Burlingame snatched them eagerly and held them to the lamplight. "Ah,
Christ!" he cried. "There's scarce a word preserved!"

"Not of the Assembly Journal," Ebenezer agreed. He told how he had
stolen the papers from Pound, to that gentleman's considerable dismay,
and had carried them with him off the shallop's plank. " Tis Maryland's
ill luck we've lost the evidence," he concluded, and laughed again at Bur-
lingame's chagrin. "Cheer yourself, Henry! Do you think I'd keep such a
prize two minutes ere I read the recto through?"

"Praise God! You've learned to tease as well!"

Without more ador though the night was nearly done, Ebenezer de-
scribed the secret history of Captain John Smith's voyage up the Chesapeake
and narrated, with some embarrassment, the entire tale of Hicktopeake's
voracious queen.

"This is too excellent!" cried Henry at the end of it. "We know Sir
Henry came alive with Smith from the town of Powhatan and went with
him up the Bay. What's more, from all we've heard, each loathed the other
and wished him ill, and there's no word of Burlingame in Smith's General!
Historic — d'you suppose Smith did him in?"

"Let's hope not, till Sir Henry sired a son," Ebenezer said. "At best he
could be no closer than a grandsire to yourself." He then recalled what
Meech had proposed to Pound— that if he were Baltimore he'd divide the
Journal among several colleagues named Smith. "I'd have thought of it

[ 556 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

sooner were I not near dead for want of sleep; belike Pound made no
mention oft, Coode was so wroth with him/'

"Or belike he did, to help redeem himself." Burlingame stood up and
stretched. "In any case, we'd best go fetch the rest without delay. Let's
sleep now for a while, and come morning we'll make our plans.'7

The Laureate's desire for sleep overcame his trepidations regarding Cap-
tain Mitchell, and they returned through the slumbering house to the bed-
chamber where he had so nearly lost his chastity some hours earlier. Ber-
trand was not there.

" 'Twas your Bertrand I saw first," Henry said, "and scarce believed my
eyes! When he told me you were here I sent him off to sleep with our
servants, so that you and I could talk in peace. In the morning he can
go to St. Mary's in a wagon with one of our men and claim your trunk."

"Aye, very good," Ebenezer said, but he had only half heard Henry's
words. Not long before, in the barn, he had been oddly disturbed by his
friend's mention of Bertrand, without quite knowing why; now he remem-
bered what the valet had told him at their first encounter aboard the
Poseidon, nearly half a year past: of the several meetings between valet
and tutor not reported by Burlingame, and of Burlingame's liaison with
Anna— which latter memory, understandably, was most unpleasant in
the light of what he had just learned about his friend's amorous practices.

Burlingame set down the shaded lantern and began undressing for bed.
"The wisest thing then would be to have him ferry the trunk right across
the Bay to Maiden. 'Tis but a matter of "

"Henry!" the Laureate broke in.

"What is't? Why are you so alarmed?" He laughed. "Get on, now, 'tis not
long till dawn."

"Where is my commission from Lord Baltimore?"

For a moment Burlingame looked startled; then he smiled. "So, your
servant told you I have it?"

"Nay," Ebenezer said sadly. "Only that I had it not."

"Then doubtless he forgot to tell you 'twas from him I had to buy it,"
Henry said testily, "with a five-pound bribe, and merely to safeguard it
till Maryland? How I wish old Slye and Scurry had caught the wretch while
'twas still in his possession! Don't you understand, Eben? That paper was
the warrant for its bearer's death! E'en so, your loyal valet made him a
fair copy, telling me 'twas but to boast of in London— I little dreamed he'd
steal your place on the Poseidonl"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 357]

He laid his hand on the poet's arm. "Dear boy, 'tis late in the day for
quarrels/7

But Ebenezer drew away. "Where is the paper hidden?"

Burlingame sighed and climbed into the bed. "In the ocean off Bermuda,
forty fathoms deep."

"Whalf

"Twas the one time Slye and Scurry played me false. I heard them
plotting to search my cabin for jewels, that they thought the king of France
had given Coode; I had one hour to draw up papers with Coode's name
and throw away all others. Nay, don't look so forlorn! I've long since
writ you out another, in hopes you were alive."

"But how can you "

"As his Lordship's agent in such matters," said Burlingame. He got out
of bed and with a key from his trousers' pocket unlocked a small chest
in one corner of the room. With the aid of the lantern he selected one
from a number of papers in the chest and presented it for Ebenezer's
inspection. "Doth it please you?"

"Why 'tis the original! Thou'rt teasing me!"

Burlingame shook his head. " Tis two weeks old at most; I could do
its like again in five minutes,"

"I'faith, then, thou'rt the world's best forger of hands!"

"Haply I am, but you do me too much honor in this instance." He
smiled: "'Twas I that penned the original."

"Not so!" cried the poet. "I saw it penned myself!"

Henry nodded, "I well remember. You fooled and fiddled with the rib-
bons on your scabbard and had like to piss for very joy."

" Twas Baltimore himself "

"You have never seen Charles Calvert," Burlingame said. "Nor hath any
stranger lately who comes uncalled for to his door: 'twas one of my duties
then to greet such folk and sound them out. When you were announced
I begged his lordship to let me disguise myself as him, as was my wont
with uncertain guests. 'Twas but a matter of powdering my beard and feign-
ing stiffness in the joints " He altered his voice to sound exactly like

the one that had narrated to Ebenezer the history of the Province. "The
voice and hand were childs play to mimic."

Ebenezer could not contain his disappointment; his eyes watered.

"Ah, now, what doth it matter?" Burlingame sat beside him on the bed
and placed an arm across his shoulders. " Twas for the same reason I posed
as Peter Sayer for a while: to feel you out. Besides, Baltimore heard and

[ 358 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

seconded all I said. Your commission hath his entire blessing, I swear."
He gave Ebenezer a squeeze.

"Tell me truly, Henry," the Laureate demanded, moving clear. "What
is your relationship with Anna?"

"Ah, friend Bertrand again," Burlingame said calmly. "What do you
think it to be, Eben?"

"I think thou'rt secretly in love with her," Ebenezer accused.

"Thou'rt in error^ then, for there's nothing secret in't."

"No trysts or secret meetings? No sweetmeats and honeybees?79

"Dear friend, control yourselfl" Henry said firmly. ''Your sister doth
me the honor of returning my regard and hath the good sense not to in-
vite her brother's and her father's wrath in consequence. As for me, I love
her in the same way I love you— no more, no less."

"Aye, and what way is that?" the poet asked. "Must we not add Portia to
the list and Dolly at the King o' the Seas, and Henry More, and the barky
boles of trees? Why did my father cashier you at St. Giles?"

'Thou'rt overwrought," said Burlingame, still seated on the bed. Let me
calm you."

Tears streamed down Ebenezer's cheeks. "Son of Sodom!" he cried,
and sprang upon his tutor. "You've had my sister's maidenhead and now
you lust for mine!"

Though both height and initiative were on his side, the Laureate was
no match for Burlingame, who was somewhat heavier, a good deal more
co-ordinated, and infinitely more practiced in the arts of combat: in
less than a minute he had Ebenezer pinned face down on the bed, his
arm twisted up behind his back.

"The truth is, Eben," he declared, "I have yearned to have the twain of
you since you were twelve, so much I loved you, 'Twas some inkling of
this love enraged old Andrew, and he cashiered me. But on my oath, your
sister is a virgin yet for all of me. As for yourself, d'you think I could not
force you now, if I so chose? Yet I do not, and would not; rape hath its joys,
but they are not worth your friendship, or your sister's love."

He released his grip and lay down, turning his back to Ebenezer. The
poet, stricken by what he'd learned, made no move to renew the attack
or even to change his position.

^ 'Whatever could come of a love 'twixt me and Anna?" Burlingame asked.
"I have nor wealth, nor place, nor even parentage. D'you think I'd waste
my seed on sows, if I could sow a child in Anna Cooke? D'you think I'd
flit about the world, if I could take her to wife? Methinks your friend Me-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [359]

Evoy spoke the truth, Eben: you know naught of the great real world!"
The Laureate, in fact, at once felt sorry for his friend's predicament,
but because he wasn't sure to what extent he ought to be outraged, and
because what the disclosures concerning Anna and Lord Baltimore really
made him feel was a sort of bitter melancholy, neither his sympathy nor
his anger found a voice. He did not see how, in the light of all this,
he could endure ever to face Burlingame again, much less sleep in the
same bed with him. What could they say to each other now? He felt
unspeakably deceived and put upon— a by no means wholly unpleasurable
feeling. Face buried in the pillow and eyes wet with pity for himself, he
recalled one of the wonderful dreams he had dreamed while senseless in
the Poseidon's foVsle: Burlingame and Anna side by side at the vessel's
rail, waving to him where he swam in the flat, green, tepid sea. So stirring
was the vision that he gave himself over to it entirely; closed his eyes, and
let the sea wash warmly by his loins and hams.

23: IN HIS EFFORTS TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF
THINGS THE LAUREATE COMES WITHIN SIGHT OF
MALDEN, BUT SO FAR FROM ARRIVING THERE,
NEARLY FALLS INTO THE STARS

IT WAS ALREADY WELL INTO THE MORNING WHEN THE LAUREATE AWOKE:

the thin fall sunshine struck his eyelids, and he was mortified to under-
stand that for the first time since early childhood he had wet the bed.
He dared not move, for fear of waking Burlingame and discovering his
shame. How to conceal it? He considered accidentally spilling the water
pitcher onto the bed, but rejected the scheme as insufficiently convincing.
The only other alternative was to absent himself stealthily from the prem-
ises, since he could not in any case have further dealings with his friend, and
to strike out on his own for Maiden before anyone was awake; but he
lacked the daring for such a move in the first place, and also had no way
of securing food and transportation for himself and Bertrand.

While considering and rejecting these courses of action he fell asleep
again, and this time it was mid-morning when he woke. Burlingame, in
the interval, had donned his clothes and left, and on the table with the
pitcher and bowl were a piece of soap, a razor, a complete outfit of gentle-

[ 560 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

man's clothing, including shoes, hat, and sword, and-wonder of wonders
—the ledger-book acquired from Ben Bragg at the Sign of the Raven!
The Laureate rejoiced to behold the gift, and for all his shock and disap-
pointment of the night just past, he could not but feel a certain warmth
for his benefactor. He sprang out of bed, stripped off the clammy, vermin-
ous rags he'd worn day and night since his capture by the pirates, and
scrubbed himself ferociously from top to toe. Then, before shaving, he could
not resist rereading the poems in his notebook— especially the hymn to
chastity, which, whether Susan Warren had been lying or not, was given
a heightened significance by her mention of Joan Toast and by the
Laureate's late adventure. As he shaved he repeated the stanzas over and
over, with a growing sense of physical and spiritual well-being. It was a
splendid morning for rededication— high and clear and fresh as April, de-
spite the season. Off came the beard and on went the clothes, which if not
a tailored fit were at least of good quality; except for his sunburned face
and hands and his somewhat shaggy hair, he looked and felt more like a
Laureate when he was done than he had at any time since leaving London.
He could scarcely wait to set out for Maiden, more particularly since Joan
Toast might well be waiting there for him!

Now his blond brows contracted, and his features ticked and twitched:
there remained still the problem of passing safely out of Captain Mitchell's
clutches and of deciding on an attitude toward Burlingame. The first
seemed infinitely simpler than the second, which was complicated not only
by his uncertainty about how he should react to his friend's disclosures,
but also by his embarrassment at wetting the bed, which childishness Henry
had almost surely observed, and his gratitude for the gift of clothing. In
fact, the more he considered possible attitudes to adopt, the more perplex-
ing seemed the problem, and he ended by returning to the window sill
and staring distractedly at the twin gravestones down by the riverbank.

After a while he heard someone mount the stairs^ and Henry himself
thrust his head into the chamber.

"Shake a leg, there, Master Laureate, or you'll miss your breakfast! Hi,
what a St. Paul's courtier!"

Ebenezer blushed. "Henry, I must confess "

"Sfcftft," warned Burlingame. "The name is Timothy Mitchell, sir." He
entered the room and closed the door. "They're waiting belowstairs, so
I must speak quickly. I've sent your man off to fetch your trunk in St.
Mary's: he'll get to Maiden before us and make things ready for you.
Hark, now: there is an Edward Cooke in Dorchester County, a drunken

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 361 ]

cuckold of a sot-weed planter; two years ago he complained of his wife's
adulteries in a petition to Governor Copley and was the butt of so much
teasing that he hath drowned himself in drink. I have told Bill Mitchell
thou'rt this same poor wretch, that in your cups are given to playing the
Laureate, and he believes me. Act sober and shamed this morning, and
there's naught to fear. Make haste, nowl"

And without allowing the poet time to protest, Henry led him by the
arm toward the stairs, still talking in an urgent, quiet voice:

"Your friend the swine-girl hath flown the coop, and Mitchell declares
shell make her way to Cambridge with the silver he thinks you gave her.
I'm to take horse at once to find and to fetch her; what you must do
is beg his pardon and volunteer to aid me in the search by way of making
good your sins. We can fetch the rest of the Journal on our way to Maiden,
and Til deliver it to Nicholson when I return." They approached the dining-
room. " 'Sheart, now, don't forget: I'm Tim Mitchell and thou'rt Edward
Cooke of Dorset/'

Ebenezer had no opportunity either to assent to or protest the course
of events: he found himself propelled into the dining-room, where Captain
Mitchell and a few of the previous evening's guests were breakfasting on
rum and a meat identified by Burlingame as broiled rasher of infant bear.
They regarded Ebenezer, some with amusement and others with a certain
rancor, which, however, observing that he was Timothy's friend, they did
not express overtly. When the two new arrivals were seated and served,
Burlingame announced to the group what he had already told Mitchell—
that their distinguished visitor was not Ebenezer Cooke the poet, but Ed-
ward Cooke the cuckold. The news occasioned some minutes of ribaldry,
following which Ebenezer made a pretty speech of apology for his imposture
and other unseemly deportment, and volunteered to aid Timothy in his
search for the fugitive servant.

"As't please ye," Captain Mitchell grumbled, and gave some last in-
structions to Burlingame: "Look ye well on old Ben Spurdance's place,
Timmy. 'Tis a den o' thieves and whores, and belike 'tis there she's flown
again. She aims to join her sister puddletrotters now that Cambridge court
is sitting."

"That I shall," smiled Burlingame.

"Take care ye don't dally by the way, and fetch Miss Susan hither
within the week, for I've a word to say to her. I'll have an end to her
drunkenness and leave-takings, by Heav'n! Every simpleton that comes
through pays her two pounds for a squint at her backside and swallows

[ 362 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

her cock-and-bull story into the bargain, and 'tis I must bear the cost o*
fetching her home againl"

As he spoke he glared at Ebenezer so accusingly that the poet turned
crimson, to the merriment of the other guests, and offered further to bear
the charge of Timothy's expedition. He was happy enough to leave the
table when the lengthy breakfast was finally done, although he could not
contemplate with pleasure the prospect of setting out for the Eastern Shore
with Burlingame. Once on the road, alone with him, it would be necessary
to come to some sort of terms with the problem put in abeyance by the
urgency of their first encounter that morning: what their future relation-
ship was to be. That it could remain what it had been thitherto, and the
revelations of the night before go undiscussed, was unthinkable!

Yet when near noontime they set out on their journey— Ebenezer riding
an ancient roan mare of Captain Mitchell's and Burlingame a frisky three-
year-old gelding of his own— he could think of no gambit for initiating the
discussion that he was courageous enough to use, and Burlingame showed
no inclination to speak of anything less impersonal than the unseasonably
warm day (which he said was called "Indian summer" by the colonials),
the occasional planters or Indians whom they encountered on the road,
and the purpose of their route.

"Calvert County is just across the Chesapeake from Dorset/' he explained,
as cheerfully as if there were no problem between theni at all. "If we Bailed
due east from here we'd land very near Cooke's Point. But what we'll do
is sail a bit northeastwards to Tom Smith's place in Talbot, just above
Dorchester; he's the wight that hath the next piece of the Journal."

"Whate'er you think best," Ebenezer replied, and despite his wish to
get matters out in the open, he found himself talking instead about Susan
Warren, to whom, he declared, he was grateful for breaking her pledge
to him, and whose flight to her father he pleaded with Burlingame not to
intercept. Burlingame agreed not to search for the swine-girl at all, and
changed the subject to something equally remote from what most occupied
the poet's mind. Thus they rode for two or three hours into the afternoon,
their horses gaited to a leisurely walk, and with every new idle exchange
of remarks it became increasingly difficult, for Ebenezer to broach the
subject, until by the time they reached their most immediate destination
—a boatlanding on the Chesapeake Bay side of Calvert County— he re-
alized that to introduce the matter now would make him appear ridicu-
lous, and with a sigh he vowed to have it out with his former tutor first
thing next morning, if not at bedtime that very night

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 363 ]

Burlingame hired a pinnace to ferry them and their animals to Talbot,
and they made the ten-mile crossing without incident. As they entered the
wide mouth of the Choptank River, which divides the counties of Talbot
and Dorchester, Burlingame pointed to a wooded neck of land nearly two
miles off to starboard and said, "If I not be far wide of the mark, friend,
that point o'er yonder is your own Cooke's Point, and Maiden stands some-
where among those trees/'

"Dear Heav'n!" cried Ebenezer. "You didn't say we would pass so near!
Pray land me there now and join me when your work is done!"

" Twould be twice imprudent," Henry replied. "For one thing, thou'rt
not yet accustomed to dealing with provincial types, as I am; for another,
'twere unseemly that their Lord and Laureate should arrive alone and un-
escorted, don't you think?"

"Then you must come with me, Henry/' Ebenezer pleaded, and the
certain surliness in his voice, which throughout the day had been the only
token of his psychic tribulation, finally disappeared. "You can get the
Journal later, can you not?"

But Burlingame shook his head. "That were no less imprudent, Eben.
There are two pieces of the Journal yet to find: the one with Tom Smith in
Talbot, the other with a William Smith in Dorset. Tom Smith I know by
sight, and where he lives; we can get his part tomorrow and be off to
Cambridge. Put this William Smith of Dorset is an entire stranger to me:
in the time 'twill take to find him, Coode could kill and rob the twain.
Besides, in Oxford, where we'll land, there is a barber that shall trim your
hair or shave you for a periwig, at my expense."

To such reason and graciousness Ebenezer could offer no objection,
though his heart sank as they dropped Cooke's Point astern and turned
north up the smaller Tred Avon River to a village called variously Oxford,
Thread Haven, and Williamstadt. There they disembarked and paid calls
first on the promised barber— whom Ebenezer on a comradely impulse
directed to trim his natural hair in the manner of the Province rather than
shave it for a periwig— and then to an inn near the wharf, where they dined
on cold roast mallard and beer, also at Burlingame's expense. Assuming
that they would sleep there as well, the Laureate vowed to review the
whole question of Henry's relations with Anna as soon as they retired for
the night, in order to determine once and for all how he should feel about
it; but Henry himself frustrated this resolve by declaring,, after supper, that
sufficient daylight remained for them to reach the house of Thomas Smith,

[ 564 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

which lay only five or six miles out of Oxford, and proposing that they
lose no time in laying hands upon his portion of the Journal.

"Tor I swear," he said, wiping his mouth upon his coat sleeve, "so damn-
ing is this evidence for Coode, he'll stop at naught to get it, nor scoff at
any hint of its location. Let's begone." He rose from the table and started
for the horses; not until he was halfway to the door did he look back to
see that Ebenezer, instead of following after, still sat before his empty
plate, wincing and sighing and ticking his tongue.

"Ah, then," he said, coming back,, "thou'rt distraught. Is't that you came
so near your estate and did not reach it?"

Ebenezer shook his head in a manner not clearly either affirmative
or negative. "That is but a part oft, Henry; you go at such a pace, I have
no time to think things through as they deserve! I cannot collect my wits
e'en to think of all the questions I would ask, much less explore your an-
swers. How can I know what I must do and where I stand?"

Burlingame laid his arm across the poet's shoulders and smiled. "What
is't you describe, my friend, if not man's lot? He is by mindless lust
engendered and by mindless wrench expelled, from the Eden of the womb
to the motley, mindless world. He is Chance's fool, the toy of aimless
Nature— a mayfly flitting down the winds of Chaos!"

"You mistake my meaning," Ebenezer said, lowering his eyes.

Burlingame was undaunted: his eyes glittered. "Not by much, methinks.
Once long ago we sat like this, at an inn near Magdalene College— do
you remember? And I said, 'Here we sit upon a blind rock hurtling through
a vacuum, racing to the grave/ 'Tis our fate to search, Eben, and do we seek
our $oul> what we find is a piece of that same black Cosmos whence we
sprang and through which we fall: the infinite wind of space . . ."

In fact a night wind had sprung up and was buffeting the inn. Ebenezer
shivered and clutched the edge of the table. "But there is so much un-
answered and unresolved! It dizzies me!"

"Many!" laughed Henry. "If you saw it clear enough 'twould not dizzy
you: 'twould drive you mad! This inn here seems a little isle in a sea of
madness, doth it not? Blind Nature howls without, but here 'tis calm-
how dare we leave? Yet lookee round you at these men that dine and
play at cards, as if the sky were their mother's womb! They remind me of the
chickens I once saw fed to a giant snake in Africa: when the snake struck
one the others squawked and fluttered, but a moment after they were
scratching about for corn, or standing on his very back to preen their
feathers! How is't these men don't run a-gibbering down the streets, if not

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 365 ]

that their minds are lulled to sleep?" He pressed the poet's arm. "You know
as well as I that human work can be magnificent; but in the face of
what's out yonder"— he gestured skywards— " 'tis the industry of Bed-
lam! Which sees the state of things more clearly: the cock that preens
on the python's back, or the lunatic that trembles in his cell?"

Ebenezer sighed. "Yet I fail to see the relevance of this; Tis not germane
at all to what I had "

"Not germane?" Burlingame exclaimed. "'Tis the very root and stem
oft! Two things alone can save a man from madness." He indicated the
other patrons of the inn. "Dull-headedness is one, and far the commoner:
the truth that drives men mad must be sought for ere it's found, and it
eludes the doltish or myopic hunter. But once 'tis caught and looked on,
whether by insight or instruction, the captor's sole expedient is to force
his will upon't ere it work his ruin! Why is't you set such store by innocence
and rhyming, and I by searching out my father and battling Coode? One
must needs make and seize his soul, and then cleave fast to't, or go babbling
in the corner; one must choose his gods and devils on the run, quill his own
name upon the universe, and declare, ' 'Tis I, and the world stands such-a-
way!' One must assert, assert, assert, or go screaming mad. What other
course remains?"

"One other," Ebenezer said with a blush. " 'Tis the one I flee . . ."

"What? Ah, 'sheart, indeed! The state I found you in at college! How
many have I seen like that in Bedlam— wide-eyed, feculent, and blind to
the world! Some boil their life into a single gesture and repeat it o'er
and o'er, others are so far transfixed, their limbs remain where'er you place
'em, still others take on false identities: Alexander, or the Pope in Rome,
or e'en the Poet Laureate of Maryland "

Ebenezer looked up, uncertain whether it was he or the impostors whom
Burlingame referred to.

"The upshot oft is," his friend concluded, "if you'd escape that fate
you must embrace me or reject me, and the course we are committed to,
despite the shifting lights that we appear in, just as you must embrace your
Self as Poet and Virgin, regardless, or discard it for something better." He
stood up. "In either case don't seek whole understanding— the search were
fruitless, and there is no time for't. Will you come with me now, or stay?"

Ebenezer frowned and squinted. "I'll come," he said finally, and went
out with Burlingame to the horses. The night was wild, but not unpleasant:
a warm, damp wind roared out of the southwest, churned the river to a

[ 366 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

froth, bent the pines like whips, and drove a scud across the stars. Both
men looked up at the splendid sight.

"Forget the word sky" Burlingame said off-handedly, swinging up on
his gelding, "'tis a blinder to your eyes. There is no dome of heaven
yonder."

Ebenezer blinked twice or thrice: with the aid of these instructions, for
the first time in his life he saw the night sky. The stars were no longer
points on a black hemisphere that hung like a sheltering roof above
his head; the relationship between them he saw now in three dimen-
sions, of which the one most deeply felt was depth. The length and
breadth of space between the stars seemed trifling by comparison: what
struck him now was that some were nearer, others farther out, and others
unimaginably remote. Viewed in this manner, the constellations lost their
sense entirely; their spurious character revealed itself, as did the false pre-
supposition of the celestial navigator, and Ebenezer felt bereft of orienta-
tion. He could no longer think of up and down: the stars were simply out
there, as well below him as above, and the wind appeared to howl not
from the Bay but from the firmament itself, from the endless corridors
of space.

"Madness!" Henry whispered.

Ebenezer's .stomach churned; he swayed in the saddle and covered his
eyes. For a swooning moment before he turned away it seemed that he
was heels over head on the bottom of the planet, looking down on the
stars instead of up, and that only by dint of clutching his legs about the
roan mare's girth and holding fast to the saddlebow with both his hands
did he keep from dropping headlong into those vasty reaches!

24: THE TRAVELERS HEAR ABOUT THE SINGULAR
MARTYRDOM OF FATHER JOSEPH FITZMAURICE, S.J.:
A TALE LESS RELEVANT IN APPEARANCE THAN IT WILL
PROVE IN FACT

IT REQUIRED LESS THAN AN HOUR'S WINDY RIDE FOR EBENEZER AND HENRY

Burlingame to reach their destination; they traveled four miles eastward
from the village of Oxford and then turned south for a mile or so along
a path leading through woods and tobacco-fields to a small log dwelling

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 367 }

on Island Creek, which, like the larger Tred Avon River, debouched into
the Great Choptank.

" 'Tis an uncommon fellow you'll meet here," Burlingame said as they
approached. "He is a kind of Coode himself, but on the side of the angels.
A valuable man/*

"Thomas Smith?" asked Ebenezer. "I don't believe Charles Calvert told

me aught " He stopped and grimaced. "That is to say, I have ne'er

heard tell of him."

"Nay/' laughed Henry, "I haply made no mention of him. He is a
Jesuit to the marrow, and so 'tis certain Thomas Smith is not his real
name. But for all that, he's a great good fellow that loves his beer and
horses. Each Friday night he hath a drinking bout with Lillingstone the
minister (the same that helped me steal Coode's letters two years past,
in Plymouth harbor); 'twas after one such bout they rode a horse into
Talbot courthouse and called it Lambeth Palace! Some say this Smith came
down from Canada to spy for the French "

"I'faith, and Baltimore trusts him with the Journal?"

Burlingame shrugged. "They have loyalties larger than France and Eng-
land, I daresay. At any rate 'tis precious little spying Smith can do herea-
bouts, and we've ample demonstrations of his spirit: last year he was
charged by Governor Copley with seditious speech, along with Colonel
Sayer, and barely missed arrest."

The term larger loyalties Ebenezer found disquieting, but he was still too
much preoccupied with his own problems to ask Burlingame whether it
was the cause of Justice or, say, international Roman Catholicism that he
referred to. They tethered their horses, and Burlingame rapped three times,
slowly and sharply, on the cabin door.

"Yes? Who is't there?"

"Tim Mitchell, friend," said Burlingame.

"Tim Mitchell, is't? I've heard that name." The door opened enough to
permit the man inside to raise a lantern, but was still chained fast to the
jamb. "What might you want o' me this time of night?"

"I'm fetching a stray horse to her master," Burlingame replied, winking
at Ebenezer.

"Is that so, now? Tis a deal o' trouble for a small reward, is't not?"

"I'll have my reckoning in Heaven, Father; for the nonce 'twill suffice
me that the man shall have his mare again."

Ebenezer had supposed that Burlingame was, for reasons of delicacy.

[ 368 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

speaking allegorically of Susan Warren's escape, but at the end he recog-
nized the pass phrase of the Jacobites.

"Ha!" cried the man inside, unlatching the door and swinging it wide.
"He shall in sooth, if the Society of Jesus hath not wholly lost its skill!
Come in, sir, pray come in! I'd not have been so chary if there were not
two of you."

Their host, Ebenezer found upon entering the cabin, was by no means
as fearsome as his deep-bass voice and the tale of his exploits suggested:
he stood not much over five feet tall; his build was slight, and his ruddy
fac^-more Teutonic than Gallic above his clerical collar— had, despite his
nearly fifty years, the boyish look that often marks the celibate. The cabin
itself was clean and, except for a wine bottle on the table and a row of
little casks along the chimneypiece, as austerely furnished as a monk's
cell For all his carousing, the priest appeared to be something of a scholar:
the walls were lined with more books than the Laureate had seen in one
room since leaving Magdalene, and around the wine bottle were spread
other books, copious papers, and writing equipment.

"This young man is Mr. Eben Cooke, from London." Burlingame said.
"He is a poet and a friend of mine."

"Indeed, a poet!" Smith shook Ebenezer's hand vigorously. He had the
habit— doubtless due in part to his small stature, but suggestive as well of
a certain effeminacy— of rising on his toes and widening his clear blue
eyes when he spoke. "How uncommonly delightful,, sir! And doth he rhyme
ad majorem Dei gloriam, as he ought?"

Ebenezer could think of no properly witty rejoinder to this tease, but
Burlingame said, "'Tis more ad majorem Baltimorensi gtoriam, Father:
he hath the post of Maryland Laureate from Charles Calvert."

"Better and better!"

"As for his loyalty, have no fear oft."

The priest let go a booming laugh. "I shan't now, Mr. Mitchell; that
I shan't, for Satan himself hath his fiendish loyalties! 'Tis the object oft
I fear, sir, not its presence!"

Burlingame urged him to calm his fears, but when he declared the pur-
pose of their visit, producing authorization from Governor Nicholson to
collect the precious papers, the Jesuit's face showed still some reservation.
"I have my piece o' the Journal hidden, right; enough," he said, "and I
know you for an agent of our cause. But what proof have we of your
friend's fidelity?"

"Methinks my post were proof enough," Ebenezer said.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 369 ]

"Of allegiance, aye, but not fidelity. Would you die to advance our cause?"

"He hath come near to that already," Burlingame said, and told their
host briefly of the Laureate's adventure with the pirates.

"The saintly look is on him, that I'll grant/' said the priest. "Tis but
a question of what cause he'll be a martyr to, I suppose."

Ebenezer laughed uncomfortably. "Then I'll confess I would not die
for Lord Baltimore, much as I favor his cause and loathe John Coode's."

The priest raised his eyebrows. Burlingame said at once, "Now there's
a proper answer, sir: a martyr hath his uses when he's dead, but alive he's
oft a nuisance to his cause." He assumed a tone of raillery. "That is the
reason why there are no Jesuit martyrs."

"In sooth it is,, though we can claim one or two. But nom de Dieu, for-
give my rudeness! Sit down and have some wine!" He waved them to the
table and set about clearing it of papers. "Correspondence from the Society,"
he explained, observing Ebenezer's curiosity, and showed them some pages
of finely-written Latin script. "I dabble in ecclesiastical history, and just
now am writing a relation of the Jesuit mission in Maryland, from 1634
to the present day. 'Tis a sixty-year Iliad in itself, I swear, and the fortress
hath yet to fall!"

"How very interesting," Ebenezer murmured. He was aware that his
earlier blundering remark had been ill-taken, and looked for a way to
atone for it.

The priest fetched two extra glasses from the sideboard and poured a
round of wine from the bottle on the table. "Jerez, from the dusty vine-
yards of Cadiz." He held his glass to the candlelight. "Judas, see how
clear! If Oporto is the blood o' Jesus, then here's the very ichor of the Spiritu
sancti. To your health, sirs."

When the toast was drunk, Burlingame said, "And now, Father, if thou'rt
quite persuaded of our loyalty "

"Yes, yes indeed," the priest said, but poured another round and made
no move to get any hidden documents. Instead he shuffled through his
papers again, as though preoccupied with them, and said, "The fact of the
matter is, the first martyr in America was a Jesuit priest, Father Joseph
FitzMaurice— 'tis his unknown history I've pieced together here."

Ebenezer pretended to be much impressed, and said by way of further
pleasing their host, "You'd think the Society of Jesus would lead the field
in saints and martyrs, would you not? The saint and the citizen may share
the selfsame moral principles, but your ordinary man will compromise and
contradict 'em at every turn, while your saint will follow them through

[ 370 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the very door of death. What I mean, the normal state of man is irrational,
and by how much the Jesuits are known for great logicians, by so much
do they approach the condition of saintliness."

"Would Heav'n that argument were sound!" The priest smiled ruefully,
"But any proper Jesuit can show you 'tis equivocal. You confuse rational
with reasonable, for one thing, and the preachment with the practice foi
another. The sad fact is, we are the most reasonable of orders-— which is
to say, we oft will compromise our principles to reach our goal, and justify
means by end, as no saint or martyr would. This holy man FitzMaurice,

for example "

"He is with the blessed, I'm sure," Burlingame broke in, "but ere we

hear his story, could we not just have a look at "

"Nay, nay, there's no great rush," Ebenezer protested, interrupting in
turn. "We have all night to fetch the Journal, now we're here, and I for
one would greatly like to hear the tale. Haply 'twill be worth mention in
my Marylandiad" He ignored the disgusted look of his friend, whose eager-
ness he thought was antagonizing their host. "What was the manner of
the fellow's death?"

The priest regarded them both with a thoughtful smile. "The truth is,
Father FitzMaurice was burnt as a heretic in a proper auto-da-f 6."
"You don't tell me!"

Father Smith nodded. "I learned his story in part from the mission
records at the Vatican and in part from enquiries made among the Indians
hereabouts; the rest I can supply from rumor and conjecture. 'Tis a touch-
ing tale, methinks, and shows both the strengths and weaknesses of saint-
hood, whereof Mr. Mitchell hath made mention."

"A Jesuit inquisitioned and burnt! Out on't, Father, I must hear it
from first to last."

It was quite late in the evening by now, and the wind still whistled
around the eaves of the cabin. Ebenezer 'accepted a pipe of tobacco from
his host, lit it from the candle flame, and settled back with a great show of
comfort; but the effect of his diplomacy was doubtless nullified by Burlin-
game, who drank off his wine and poured another glassful without waiting
to be invited, and who made no attempt to conceal his disapproval of the
progress of events.

Father Smith lit a pipe himself and ignored his guest's unseemly con-
duct. "In the records of the Society of Jesus in Rome," he began, "one
can find all the annual letters of the mission in Maryland. Two priests
and a coadjutor came hither in the Ark and the Dove with the first colonists,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 371 ]

and another priest and coadjutor followed ere the year was done. In the

very first annual letter to Rome " He fished through the stack of papers

before him. "Aye, here's my copy. We read: Two priests of Ours were
assigned this year as companions to a certain gentleman -who went to
explore unknown lands. They with great courage performed an uncomfort-
able voyage of about eight months, both much shaken in health, with spells
of illness, and gave us no slight hope of reaping ultimately an abundant
harvest, in ample and excellent regions!'

"Is't Maryland they speak of?" Ebenezer asked. "Why don't they use
their patron's name? 'Twas a bit ungrateful, don't you think?" He remem-
bered hearing Charles Calvert— or, rather, Burlingame in disguise— describe
the difficulties Governor Leonard Calvert had had with these same early
Jesuits.

"Not at all," the priest assured him. "They knew well old Cecil Calvert
was a proper Catholic at heart, if something too liberal-minded, but 'twas
necessary to use great caution in all things, inasmuch as the forces of anti-
christ were e'en more in ascendancy then than now, and the Jesuits lived
in constant peril. It was their wont to travel incognito, or with an alias,
and refer to their benefactors with coded epithets such as a certain gentle-
man, 01 a certain Catholic baron. The certain gentleman here was George
Calvert— not the first Lord Baltimore, but the brother of Cecilius and
Leonard. In the same way, Baltimore himself gave out that Maryland was
called after Queen Henrietta Maria, albeit 'tis named in fact for the Queen
of Heaven, as surely as is St. Mary's City."

"Nay, can that be?" Ebenezer was not a little troubled by all this asso-
ciation of the Baltimores with the Jesuits, which brought to his mind the
dark plots Bertrand had believed in. "I understood 'twas King Charles

called it Maryland, after Baltimore had proposed the name " He

turned to Burlingame, who was staring thoughtfully into the fireplace.
"What was the name, Henry? It slips my mind."

"Crescentia" Burlingame replied, and added: "Whether 'twas meant to
signify the holy lunar crescent of Mohammed or the carnal crescent sacred
to Priapus is a matter still much argued by the scholars."

"Ah, Henry!" Ebenezer blushed for his friend's rudeness. "I remember
now," he said to Father Smith, " 'twas called for some Roman slave or
other."

"No matter," the priest said indulgently. "In any case 'twas but a piece
of courtliness on Calvert's part to give out that he had chosen the King's
suggestion o'er his own."

[ £72 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Then pray let's go on with the tale, sir, and I'll not interrupt you
farther."

Father Smith replaced the letter on the pile. "The two priests that made
the first voyage were called Father John Gravener and Father Andrew
White/7 he said. "Father White's name is genuine— he wrote this fine
account here, called A Briefe Relation of the Voyage Unto Mary-land.
The other name is an alias of Father John Altham. One of these two went
with George Calvert on the journey that you just heard spoken of in the
letter, which purported to be an expedition into Virginia. Methinks 'twas
Father White, for he was as mettlesome a fellow as ever cassock graced.
But the other wight, whose name is absent from the letters, was in fact
the saint I spoke of: (me Father Joseph FitzMaurice, that also called him-
self Charles Fitzjames and Thomas FitzSimmons. The truth oft is, he
ne'er returned from the journey."

"But the letter you read declared "

"I know— to the author's shame. 'Twas doubtless meant to impress his
superiors in Rome with the mission's success. Father FitzMaurice was the
last of the three priests to come hither in 1634. ^is was a soul too zealous
for God's work in London in those troubled times, which was best done
unobtrusively, ^nd 'twas at his superiors' behest he shipped for Maryland,
where his missionary zeal would redound to the glory of the Society and
not its jeopardy.

"But alas, on his arrival in St. Mary's, Father FitzMaurice found his
brothers' work aimed almost wholly at the planters themselves, that were
slipping daily nigh to apostasy. He was farther disillusioned by the Pis-
cataways of the place, that so far from being heathen, far outshone their
English brethren in devotion to the One True Faith. Father White had
made an early convert of their Tayac, as is our policy, and anon the
entire town of salvages had set to making rosaries of their roanoke. Tis
little wonder that when George Calvert proposed his journey of exploration,
Father FitzMaurice straightway offered to accompany him. 'Twas Calvert's
declared intent to learn the western boundaries of his brother's county
palatine, but his real design was to dicker privily with Captain William
Claiborne about the Kent Island question."

"I recall that name," Ebenezer said. "He was the spiritual father of John
Coode!"

"As sure as Satan was of Martin Luther," agreed the priest. "Father
FitzMaurice saw how scanty were George Calvert's provisions, and so put
by a large stock for himself; regardless of the length of the expedition,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 373 ]

he planned to live some months among the wildest heathen he could
find, and bring new souls to the Supremest Lord Proprietary of AIL"

"That is good," Ebenezer said appreciatively. "That is well said."

The priest smiled acknowledgment. "He packed one sea-chest full of
bread, cheese, dried unripe corn, beans, and flour; in a second he packed
three bottles of communion wine and fifteen of holy water for baptisms;
a third carried the sacred vessels and a marble slab to serve for an altar;
and a fourth was fitted with rosaries, crucifixes, medallions, and sundry
gewgaws and brummagem oddments for appeasement and persuasion of
the heathen. The whole was loaded in the pinnace Dove, and on the fourth
of September they set sail to southwards, Howbeit, ere the afternoon was
done the pinnace came about and headed up the Chesapeake instead. When
Father FitzMaurice inquired the reason for't, he was told they were simply
tacking to windward, and inasmuch as he knew naught of the ways of
ships,, he had perforce to say no more.

"At sunset they made anchorage in the lee of a large island, which the
Piscataway guide called Monoponson, but George Calvert called Kent
Island. Father FitzMaurice went ashore in the first boat and was chagrined
once more, for 'twas settled and planted from shore to shore and abounded
with white men, , who were heretic and inhospitable enough, but in no
wise heathens. Then fancy his disgust when Calvert gave out to the com-
pany that this was in fact their destination, and that his real mission was to
negotiate Lord Baltimore's disputes with Captain Claiborne!

"Yet when he voiced his pique to Father White, that good man recom-
mended acquiescence. 'We must make a virtue of necessity/ is what he
counseled. 'If Claiborne trades with salvages, 'tis logically antecedent there
are Indians on this island. Who then can say but what our paths were
guided hither for the improvement of these same salvages, and the further-
ance of the One True Faith? Were't not in fact impiety, a denial of God's
direction, not to remain here and reap our bounty among the heathen?' "

"There is a pretty piece of casuistry," Burlingame remarked.

"'Twas reasoned closely enough," the priest agreed, "but Father Fitz-
Maurice would have none oft, nor would he rest content ere he found
himself amid truly salvage Indians. Such heathen as remained upon
the island, said he, were already half converted by the Virginians, though
like as not to some rank heresy or other; the true worth of the missionary
could be assayed only among the pure and untouched heathen that had
ne'er set eyes on white men.

"Father White spoke farther, but to no avail, so incensed was Father

[ 374 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

FitzMaurice; they retired at length with some of the ship's company, the
rest being engaged in carousal ashore. Next day no trace of Father Fitz-
Maurice was to be found, nor of his four small chests, nor of the small
boat that had been tethered beside the Dove. One message alone he left,
by Father White's breviary: Si pereo, pereo A.M.D.G. He ne'er was seen
again, and in time the Society gave him up for dead and struck his name
from the records. No wight e'er learned whither he rowed, or what his fate
was, until I commenced my researches some fifteen years ago: 'twas my
good fortune then to converse with one Tacomon, an ancient salvage that
once was king of a town at Castlehaven Point, just o'er the Choptank
from here, and from him I heard a tale whose hero could be none but
Father FitzMaurice. . . .

"As best I understand it, Father FitzMaurice rowed from Kent past
Tilghman's Island and eastward into the mouth of the Choptank, whether
by accident or design, and headed shorewards • when he saw the salvage
town. Inasmuch as he faced his vessel's stern while rowing, the Indians
had long since descried him and knew him for a white man, and King
Tacomon with sundry of his Wisoes went down to greet him on the beach.

"When the stranger stepped ashore, they observed that he wore a strange
black gown, and that the image of a bird was painted on his boat. Tis
these two details I pounced on when I heard them, for the Dove's boat
carried such an emblem on its stern, and Father FitzMaurice ne'er removed
his cassock save to sleep. Moreover, he had four wooden chests aboard the
boat, and when he came ashore he fell to his knees in prayer— no doubt
to Maria Stella Maris, to thank her for his safe deliverance. The salvages
showed great interest in all this, and greater still when Father FitzMaurice
gave them baubles from his chest. Tacomon sent a man straightway into
the town, who soon fetched down a goodly load of furs and all the other
salvage folk as well.

"Father FitzMaurice was delighted, I feel certain, at the numbers of
the heathen that he would quite reasonably assume had ne'er seen a
Christian man before. Picture him handing 'round trinkets with his left
hand and blessing their recipients with his right, and all the while,
so Tacomon remembered, babbling in a tongue no man among them
kenned. They loaded furs into his boat until at length he saw they took
him for a trader, whereupon he gave each one a crucifix and doubtless
tried to explain, by signs, the Passion of Our Savior.

"Anon this Tacomon, when he had scrutinized the crucifix, gave com-
mands to one of his Wisoes, at the same time pointing to the cross. The

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 375 ]

man ran once more to the town and came back with a small wooden box,
at sight of which all the salvages fell prostrate on the beach. Would not
Father FitzMaurice guess the box contained some pagan relic sacred to
the tribe? I see him rehearsing in his mind the pretty ceremony of casting
their idol to the ground, as did Moses on descending from Mount Sinai,
and wondering how much holy water 'twould want to baptize the lot.

"But alas for him, his trials were not yet done; the fact of the matter
was, his virgin town had been deflowered years before by some trader pass-
ing through— and what was worse, by an arrant heretic Virginian! Tacomon
fetched no Golden Calf from the box, but a leathern Bible, which was
fronted with a woodcut of the Crucifixion. Just opposite (for I saw the
book myself) the dedication ran: To the Most High and Mighty Prince
James . . . that the Church of England shall reap good fruit thereby . . . !
The King held the book aloft for all to see, whereon with one accord the
assembled Indians sang by rote the Anglican Te Deum:

We praise thee, O God, we knowledge

thee to be Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee,

the father everlasting . . .

The poor father must have come near swooning; in any case he snatched
two or three cracifixes from Tacomon and his cawcawaassoughs, leaped
into his boat, and did not pause to cross himself till he was out of arrowshot
As for the Indians, when they saw him shake his fist at them they took it
for a fare-thee-well, which they returned with a reprise of their hymn,"

"Luckless wretch!" laughed Ebenezer, and even Burlingame, though
still by no means playing the model guest, could not but smile and remark
that the way of the saint is hard.

"But pray," the poet asked, "what was the poor man's fortune after, or
is't a mystery?"

"When I had learnt this much of his misfortunes," said the priest, "I
could not rest till I discovered his end. I made enquiries up and down
the Province, but especially in lower Dorchester County, for I guessed
that when his first try failed he would row farther south in search of
heathen. For a long time my efforts bore no fruit. Then not many years
past an Indian was brought to trial in Cambridge court on charges of kill-
ing an entire family of white folk, and, happening to have some business
in the area, I took it upon myself to shrive the poor man of his sins. He
would none of my services and was hanged anon, but in our bootless col-
loquy I learned^ as't were by accident, the fate of Father FitzMaurice.

[ 376 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"The name of the salvage was Charley Mattassin. He was not of any
Choptank town, but from a warlike band of Nanticokes that in time long
past had crossed into the marshes of Dorchester and are said to live there
yet in fierce seclusion. This Charley was in fact the Tayac's son, and for
all he had run off with an English whore, that later was among the souls
he murthered, he bore surpassing hatred for the English, which sentiment
he owned was learnt from his father the Tayac. He contemned me in
especial, when I went to him with holy water and crucifix to baptize and
shrive him: he spat upon my cassock and declared his people had once
burned a man like me upon a cross! I then enquired, Did he mean an
Englishman? For I had heard of no such deed. And he replied, in essence,
'twas not merely an Englishman but a black-robed priest with crucifix and
breviary, such as I, who with all his magical water could not cool the fire
that burnt him. And what was yet more curious, this priest was Charley's
own grandfather, so he declared, and was burnt by Charley's father."

"Out on't, this is incredible!" Ebenezer cried.

The priest agreed. "When I had heard it I put by my holy errand and
implored him to tell me more—not alone because the tale seemed so pi-
quant, but also in hopes 'twould shed some light, howsoever grisly, on my
history of the Jesuit mission. I shall answer for the Indian's soul to God,
but i'faith,, a good tale's worth a guilty conscience, is't not? Moreover, I can
but think God sent me thither to hear't, for when 'twas done I knew the
full and tragic tale of Father FitzMaurice. . . .

"When that sainted wight left Castlehaven, who knows how long he
drifted south, or how many were his vain sallies ashore? What force save
miracle could keep his craft afloat for hours and days in the lusty Chesa-
peake, and wash him at last to the wild rogue Nanticokes I spoke of? As
Charley told me, that had the tale by rote from the Tayac his father, some
threescore autumns past a fearsome hurricane swept the marsh and washed
a strange boat into the Indian town. In the boat, swooned dead away, was
a black-frocked Englishman, haply the first they had laid eyes upon, and
sundry brass-bound chests."

"Then in sooth 'twas no man else than Father FitzMaurice!"

"So said my heart on hearing it," replied the priest, "yet 'twas so won-
drous a coincidence I scarce durst believe it. Howbeit, my informant's next
words cleared all doubt: there was an old Belief among his tribe, he said,
that white-skinned men are treacherous as water-vipers, and should be mas-
sacred on sight. Yet so unusual was the aspect of this visitor, and so strangely
was he brought into their midst, some feared he was an evil spirit bent

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 377 ]

on working mischief among them; and they feared this the more strongly
inasmuch as his cassock looked like the black storm cloud, and on the tran-
som of his boat was drawn the image of a bird! I have no doubts it was
the Dove, but the salvages took it for a tern and were the more alarmed,
for that the tern is rarely seen so far from open water save when some
great storm blows him inland.

"Anon they overcame their fear, inasmuch as the man seemed helpless,
and whilst he lay still a-swoon they fetched him to a lodge and tethered
his ankles with rawhide thongs. Then they broke open his chests and decked
themselves with beads and crucifixes. When the prisoner awoke he knelt
for a while with lowered head and then addressed them in a tongue they
knew naught of. While the elders of the town held council on what to
do with him, the younger men gave him food and stood about to watch
his antics, which they thought supremely funny. He caught sight of the
crucifixes from his chest and for some hours repeated a ritual of gesticula-
tion, which though not a single salvage understood, it so pleased 'em that
they practiced the gestures in turn, and passed them on to succeeding gen-
erations. E'en Charley Mattassin could recall them,, that had learnt them
from his father, and for aught I know his tribe performs 'em yet down in
the Dorset marshes. Here was the first,, as 'twas shown to me— see what
you make oft."

Moving out from the table, Father Smith pointed to himself and then
in quick succession plucked at his cassock, held up his crucifix, crossed him-
self, dropped to his knees in simulated prayer, jumped up, and stretched
out his arms and raised his eyes in imitation of Christ on the cross.

"Methinks he meant to show he was a priest," said Burlingame.

"Aye!" the Laureate agreed excitedly. " 'Sheart, 'tis like a voice from
the gravel"

"Yet not by half so clever as this next," the priest said.

"How's that? The salvages recalled e'en more?"

Father Smith nodded proudly. "That first was mere identification, but

this: 'tis no less than Christian doctrine, done in signs! First came this "

He held up three fingers,, which Ebenezer correctly interpreted as symboliz-
ing the Holy Trinity.

"Then this " After indicating the first of the three, the priest stood

on tiptote and pointed skywards with his right hand, grasping with his left
the area of his genitalia.

"Dear me!" laughed Burlingame. "I fear 'tis the Father in Heav'nl",

"No less," beamed the priest. He then raised his index finger beside

[ 378 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the forefinger and, in succession, rocked an invisible child in his arms and
displayed the crucifix, unequivocally representing the Son. Raising next his
ring finger beside the other two, he lay for a moment prostrate on the
ground with closed eyes and then, fixing his gaze on the ceiling, rose
slowly to his feet, meanwhile flapping his arms like wings to suggest the
Ascension and thus the Holy Ghost.
"Marvelous!" the poet applauded.

"Was't past his powers to do the Virgin Birth?" Burlingame inquired.
Father Smith was not at all ruffled. "Faith moveth mountains," he de-
clared. "How can we doubt his prowess in any article of doctrine, when
such a subtle mystery as the Unity of the Trinity he dispenses with so lu-
cidly as this?" Holding forth the same three fingetS as before, he alternately
spread and closed them.
"Braver

"Of course," he said, " 'twas an entire waste of wit, for not a heathen
in the house knew what he meant. Methinks they must have rolled about
in mirth, and when the poor priest wearied they would prod him with a
stick to set him pantomiming farther."

"Surely your informant could not tell you such details," Burlingame
said skeptically. "All these things took place before his birth."

"He could not, nor did he need to," Smith replied. "All salvages are
much alike, be they Indian, Turk, or unredeemed English, and I know
the ways of salvages. For this reason I shall speak henceforth from the
martyr's point of view, as't were, adding what I can surmise to the things
Charley Mattassin told me. Twill make' a better tale than otherwise, and
do no violence to what scanty facts we have."
He returned to the table and poured a fourth round of Jerez.
"Let us say the young men mock him for some hours, aping his gestures
and tormenting him with sticks. They become quite curious about the color
of his skin: one grasps the priest's hand in his own, chattering to his
companions as he compares the hue; another slaps the flesh of his stomach
and points to Father FitzMaurice's cassock, wondering whether the stranger
hath the same outlandish color from head to foot. The rest deride this
notion, to the great indignation of the curious one; he lifts up his muskrat
loincloth and voices a second conjecture, so fantastical to Ijis brothers that
their eyes brim o'er with glee. They fall to wagering— four, five strings of
wompompeag—and at length deprive Father FitzMaurice of his weathered
clothes, for proof. Ecce homo! There he stands, all miserable and a-shiver;
his belly is as white as the belly of a rockfish, and though his parts have

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 379 ]

lain as idle as a Book of Common Prayer in the Vatican, he boasts in
sooth a full set nonetheless. The challenger stalks off with his winnings,
and the young Tayac, who is not above thirty years of age, gives commands
to end the sport."

"Ah, now, prithee, wait a momentl" Burlingame protested. 'This is made
up from the whole cloth!"

"Say, from the Holy Cloth," rejoined the imperturbable Smith, widen-
ing his blue eyes at the jest.

"I for one prefer't thus," Ebenezer declared impatiently to his friend.
"Let him flesh his bony facts into a tale."

Burlingame shrugged and turned back to the fire.

"The women then bring forth the evening meal," the priest went on.
"To Father FitzMaurice, cowering naked on his grass mat in the corner,
it seems interminable, but anon 'tis done; the women remain, tobacco is
passed round, and a general carouse ensues. The priest looks on, abashed
but curious, for albeit he is a Jesuit, he is a man as well, and plans more-
over to write a treatise on the practices of the salvage if his life is spared.
His presence is for the nonce ignored, and as they disport in their error
he wrings his wits to hit upon a means of speaking with them, so to initiate
the business of conversion.

"The hour arrives when the young Tayac addresses certain words to all
the group, sundry of whom turn round to regard the priest. Two hoary,
painted elders leave the hut to fetch back a carven pole, some ten feet
long, that bears a skunk pelt at the bottom and a crudely mounted muskrat
on the top. All present genuflect before it, and its bearers hold it forth
toward Father FitzMaurice. The Tayac points his finger at the muskrat
and speaks certain gibberish, whose imperious tone hath need of no trans-
lation: 'tis a call for similar obsequies from the priest

"Father FitzMaurice deems the moment opportune. His nakedness for-
got, he springs to his feet and shakes his head to signify refusal. Then he
once more holds aloft his crucifix, nods his head in vigorous affirmation,
and makes a motion as though to fling the idol down. The Tayac now
grows wroth; he repeats the same command in louder tones, and the other
folk are still. But Father FitzMaurice stands firm: he raises a finger to in-
dicate that the figure on the crucifix is the true and only God, and goes
so far as to spit upon the sacred staff. At once the Tayac strikes him down;
the idol-bearers place the butt of their pole upon the back of his neck to
pin him fast to the dirt, and the Tayac pronounces a solemn incantation,
whereto the others shout assent."

[ 580 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Unhappy wretch!" sighed Ebenezer. "I fear his martyrdom is at hand/'

"Not yet/' the priest declared. "Now the hut is cleared at once, and
Father FitzMaurice is left trembling in the dirt. Anon a dozen salvage
maidens enter, all bedaubed with puccoon paint; they spread their mats
about the floor and to all appearances make ready for the night . . ."

" Tis no mysteiy what will ensue," Burlingame remarked, "if these Nan-
ticokes are like some other Indians."

But Ebenezer, who knew nothing of such matters, implored Father
Smith to go on with the tale.

"Father FitzMaurice is abashed tenfold at the presence of the maidens/'
said the priest, "more especially as he seems the subject of a colloquy among
them, carried on in mirthful whispers. He makes a mental note, for his
treatise, that salvage maids all share a common chamber, and rejoices when
at last the fire burns out and he can clothe his shame with darkness.

"But his solitude doth not live long: he hath told not more than three
Ave Marias ere an Indian wench, perfumed with grease of bear and covered
no more than an Adamite, flings herself upon him and bites him in the
neck!"

"I'God!" cried Ebenezer.

"The good man struggles, but the maid hath strength, and besides, his
foot is tethered. She lays hands upon the candle of the Carnal Mass, and
mirabile, the more she trims it, the greater doth it wax! Father FitzMaurice
scarce can conjure up his Latin, yet so bent is he on making at least one
convert ere he dies, he stammers out a blessing. For reply the heathen
licks his ear, whereupon Father FitzMaurice sets to saying Paternosters
with all haste, more concerned now with the preservation of his own grace
than the institution of his ward's. But no sooner is he thus engaged than
zut! she caps his candle with the snuffer priests must shun, that so far
from putting out the fire, only fuels it to a greater heat and brilliance.
In sum, where he hath hoped to win a convert, 'tis Father FitzMaurice
finds himself converted, in less time than it wants to write a syllogism—
and baptized, catechized, received, and given orders into the bargain!"

Burlingame smiled at the Laureate's absorption in the tale. "Doth that
strike you closely, Eben?"

"Barbarous!" the poet said with feeling. "To fall so from his vows by
no fault of- his own! What misery must his noble soul have suffered!"

"Nay, sir," Father Smith declared, "you forget he is the stuff of saints,
and a Jesuit as well."

Ebenezer protested that he did not understand.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"He explores the pros and contras of his case," the priest explained, "and
adduces four good arguments to ease his suffering conscience. To begin
with, 'tis e'er the wont of prudent missionaries to wink their eyes, at the
outset, at any curious customs of the folk they would convert. In the
second place, he is promoting the rapport 'twixt him and the heathen that
must be established ere conversion can commence; 'twas for no other cause
than this he packed the chest of baubles, and the present tactic, albeit not
of his own invention, is both cheaper and more effective. Third, 'tis to
his ultimate good he sins, as is shown past cavil by holy precedent: had
not the illustrious St. Augustine, for example,, essayed the manifold refine-
ments of the flesh, the better to know and appreciate virtue? And finally,
lest these have an air of casuistry, he is tethered and pinioned from head
to foot and hath therefore no choice or culpability in the matter. In fine,
so far from wailing o'er his plight, he comes to see in it the hand of Provi-
dence and joins in the labor with a will. If his harvest be commensurate
to his tilling of the ground, so he reflects, he might well be raised to
a bishopric by Rome!

"When anon the maid is ploughed and harrowed, Father FitzMaurice
finds her place taken by another, whom he loses no chance to prime like
the first for her conversion. Ere dawn, with the help of God, he hath per-
suaded every woman in the hut of the clear superiority of the Faith, and
inasmuch as there were in all some half-score visitants, when the last is
catechized he falls exhausted into sleep.

"Not long after, he awakes in high spirits: such strides hath he made
toward conversion of the women, he feels sure of making progress with
the men. Nor do his hopes seem groundless, for anon the Tayac and his
cawcawaassoughs appear and order the women from the hut, after which
they cut the tether from his foot. 'Bless you, my friends,' he cries. *You have
seen the true and only Way!' And he forgives them for his cruel use at their
hands. They fetch him up and lead him from the hut, and he is over-
whelmed with joy at what he sees: the hurricane is gone, and through its
last dark clouds the sun falls on a large wooden cross, erected in the court-
yard of the town, and on the priest's four precious sea-chesty at its foot.
The Tayac points first to Father FitzMaurice's crucifix and then to the
larger cross.

" This is God's work,' declares the missionary. 'He hath shewed to thee
thine error, and in thy simple fashion thou dost Him homage!' He is
moved to kneel in grateful prayer to God, whom he thanks both for work-
ing His divine will on the minds of the heathen men and for vouchsafing

[ 582 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

to His lowly priest the wherewithal to work His will upon their unmarried
women. Then alas, his prayers are cut short by two strong men, who grasp
his arms and lead him to the cross. Father FitzMaurice smiles indulgently
on their roughness,, which he takes for childish haste to commence the
ceremony, but in a trice they bind him fast to the cross by his ankles,
arms, and neck, and then pile faggots on the sea-chests at his feet. All
in vain he cries for mercy to the gathering crowd. His novitiates of the
night just past, when he addresses them, merely cluck their tongues and
watch the scene with interest: 'tis the law of their land that when a man
is doomed to die he may enjoy the tribe's unmarried girls on the eve of his
execution, and they have discharged their obligation!

"Then comes this great soul's noblest moment. The Tayac confronts
him for the last time, in one hand the sacred muskrat, in the other a flam-
ing torch, and makes an ultimate demand for his obeisance. Yet though
he sees his case is lost, Father FitzMaurice summons up his last reserves
of courage and spits on the pagan idol once again."

"A very prince of saints!" said Ebenezer.

" Tis a marvel he could summon any spit," Burlingame observed.

"At once a shout goes up, and the Tayac flings his torch upon the fag-
gots! The salvages dance and shake their sacred pole at him— for in fact
'tis as a heretic they condemn him — and the flames leap up to singe his
puccoon paint. The good man knows that our afflictions are God's blessings
in disguise, and so reasons that he was meant not for a missionary after all,
but for a martyr. He lifts his eyes to Heaven, and with his final tortured
breath he says, 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do. . . .' "

Though he was not religiously inclined, so impressed was Ebenezer by
the tale that he murmured "Amen."

" 'Twould perhaps have made his death more easy, if no less warm, had
Father FitzMaurice known that even as he roasted there were three white
babes a-building in the wombs of his novitiates. Of these, one died a-bearing,
ancfther was exposed out in the marsh, and the third, when she was nubile,
became the mother of my informant by the old Tayac himself. As for the
Jesuit mission, when George Calvert returned at last to St. Mary's City,
his negotiations with Claiborne proving bootless, the remaining priests
vowed not to report their colleague's defection to Rome until they learned
more of his whereabouts. To this end they reported, in the annual letter I
read you, that both priests had returned with the expedition. After that
time such various rumors were heard of him, none of them true, that they
put off reporting his absence indefinitely. New priests came to the Province;

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 383 ]

God's work went on less zealously but more steadily, and in time the name
FitzMaurice was forgot."

He would have said more, but Burlingame interrupted him to ask, "And
what is your opinion of him, Father? Was the man a fool or a saint?"

The priest turned his wide blue eyes upon his questioner. "Those are not
true alternatives, Mr. Mitchell: he was a fool of God, as hath been many a
holy man before him, and the most that can be said is that his way was not
the way of the Society. A dead missionary makes no converts, nor doth a
live martyr."

"It is truly said," Ebenezer declared: "There are more ways to the woods
than one!'

"Then permit me a nearer question," Burlingame insisted. "Which way
is the more congenial to your temper?"

Father Smith appeared to consider this question for some moments before
replying. He tapped out his pipe and fingered the papers on the table.
"Why do you ask?" he inquired at last, though his tone suggested that he
knew the reason already. " 'Tis not likely one could gauge his capacity for
martyrdom ere the choice was thrust upon him."

To this Burlingame only smiled, but his meaning was unmistakable.
Ebenezer blushed with horror,

"The fact of the matter is," the priest went on, "I scarcely dare deliver
the Journal into your hands. The ways of Coode are infinitely devious, and
your authorization is signed by Nicholson, not Lord Baltimore."

"So 'that is the stripe oft!" Burlingame laughed mirthlessly. "You don't
trust Nicholson, that owes his post to Baltimore? He was hand-picked by
reason of his enmity toward Coode!"

The priest shook his head. "Francis Nicholson is no man's tool, my friend.
Hath he not struck out already at Governor Andros, that erst was his
superior? Doth he not intend to move the capital from St. Mary's to Anne
Anindel Town, for no better reason than to show his allegiance to the
Protestant King?"

"But dear God!" Burlingame cried. " 'Twas Nicholson stole the Journal
in the first place, and smuggled it to Baltimore! How can you doubt his
loyalty?"

" Tis as I $aid before of Mister Cooke," Father Smith explained. "All
men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate. Thus
Father FitzMaurice showed a loyal zeal for service in the Province, as did
Fathers White and Altham, but once here, that same zeal led to his defec-
tion; no man knew till then 'twas some other goal he strove for. How shall

[ 384 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

I say it?" He smiled nervously, as if aware that his words were not per-
suading Burlingame.

"Many travelers ride the Plymouth coach together/7 Burlingame sug-
gested, *1)ut not all have Maryland for their destination/'

"Our Laureate here could not have put it better! If I could see an au-
thorization in Lord Baltimore's hand, with his signature affixed, as I was
•instructed to demand, then I should deliver up the Journal to John Calvin
himself, and there's an end on't."

Fearing the measures his friend might threaten, Ebenezer came near to
imploring the priest to trust him personally, as Charles Calvert's poet
laureate, if he could not trust Nicholson or Burlingame; but he checked
himself upon remembering again, with no little annoyance, that his com-
mission was not authentic, and that even if it were, he could not produce
it for inspection.

A new expression came to Burlingame's face: leaning over the table to-
ward their host he drew from his belt a leather-handled, poigTwrdlike knife,
and in the candlelight ran his thumb across its edge.

"I had thought the Governor's note were sufficient persuasion," he said,
"but here is logic keen enough to sway the most adamant of Jesuits! Produce
the Journal, an it please you!"

Though he had anticipated some sort of threat, Ebenezer was so shaken
by this move that he could not even gasp.

Father Smith stared round-eyed at the knife and licked his lips. "I .shan't
be the first to perish in the service of the Society."

Even to Ebenezer this remark sounded more experimental than defiant.
Burlingame smiled. "'Twere a coward indeed that feared a clean stroke of
the dirk! E'en Father FitzMaurice had a harder lot, to say naught of
Catherine on her wheel or Lawrence on his griddle: what would it avail me
to let you join their company? I'd be no nearer the Journal than I am."

'Then 'tis some torture you have in mind?" Father Smith murmured.
""We Christians are no strangers there, either."

"Most especially the Holy Roman Church," Burlingame said cynically,
"that hath authored such delights as never Saracen could devise!" Not tak-
ing his eyes from the priest, he proceeded to describe, perhaps for Ebene-
zer's benefit, various persuasions resorted to by the agents of the Inquisi-
tion: the strappado, the aselli, the escdera, the potro, the tablillas, the rack,
the Iron Maiden, the hot brick, the Gehenna, and others. The Laureate
was impressed enough by this recital, though it made him feel no easier
about the business at hand. Father Smith sat stonily throughout.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [385]

"Yet these are all refinements for the connoisseur/' Burlingame declared.
"Who inflicts them savors his victim's pain as an end, not as a means, and
I've nor taste nor time for such a game." Still thumbing the knife blade he
left the table— whereat the priest gave a start despite himself— and bolted
the cabin door. "I have observed among the Caribbean pirates that they
may make a man eat his own two ears for sport, or fornicate his daughter
with a short-sword; but when 'tis certain information that they seek, they
have recourse to a simpler and wondrous quick expedient." He advanced
toward the table, knife in hand. "Since thou'rt a priest, the loss should cause
you no regrets; what shall unbind your tongue, sir, is the manner of the
losing. Tis a blow to lose a treasure in one fell stroke, but how harder to be
robbed oft jewel by jewel! Must I say more?"

" 'Sblood,, Henry!" Ebenezer cried, jumping to his feet. "I cannot think
you mean to do't!"

"Henry, is't?" the priest said thickly. "Thou'rt impostors after all!"

Burlingame frowned at Ebenezer. "I mean to do't, and you shall aid me.
Hold him fast till I find rope to bind him!"

Although the priest showed no inclination to resist, Ebenezer could not
bring himself to participate in the business. He stood about uncertainly.

"Now that I know you for an agent of John Coode," Father Smith de-
clared, "I am prepared to suffer any pain. You shall not have the Journal
from my hands."

When Burlingame growled and advanced another step, the priest
snatched a letter-opener from under his papers and retreated to a farther
wall, where, instead of assuming a posture of defense, he placed the point
of his weapon against his heart. "Stand -fast!" he cried, when Burlingame
approached. "Another step and I will end my life!"

Burlingame halted. " Tis merely bluff."

"Hither, then, and give't the lie!"

"And do you believe your God excuses holy suicide?"

"I know not what He excuses," said the priest. " Tis the Church I serve,
and I know well they can justify my act."

After a pause Burlingame shrugged, smiled, and replaced the poignard
in his belt. "Pourquoi est-ce que je taerais un homrne si loyal <i la cause
sainte?"

The priest's expression changed from defiance to incredulousness. "What
did you say?"

"]*<d dit, vous avez d6montre votre fid&itg, et aussi votre sagesse: je ne
me confie pas & Nicholson plus que vous. Allons, le Journdl"

[ 386 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

This tactic mystified Ebenezer no less than Father Smith. "I cannot fol-
low your French, Henry!" he complained. But instead of translating,
Burlingame turned upon him with the poignard and backed him against
the wall.

"You will understand anon, poor fool!" Henry cried, and to the still-
bewildered priest he ordered, "Fouillez cet homme pour les armes, et puis
apportez le Journal!"

"What hath possessed you?" the poet demanded. Coming on the heels of
all his other doubts about Burlingame, this new turn of events was particu-
larly discomforting.

"Who are you?" asked the priest. "And what credentials can you show?"

"Parlons une langue plus douce" smiled Burlingame. "Je rial pas
tfordres ecrits de Baltimore, et je n'en veux pas. Vous admettrez qu'il ne
soft pas la source seule de l'autorit£? Quant & mes lettres de crfance, je les
porte toujours sur ma personnel He unbuttoned his shirt and displayed
the letters MC carved into the skin of his chest. "Celles-ci ne sont peu
connues b Thomas Smith?"

"Monsieur Casteene!" exclaimed Father Smith. "Vous et&s Monsieur
Casteene?"

"Ainsi que vous etes Jesuite" Henry said, "et je peux faire plus que
Baltimore ne reve pour debarrasser ce lieu de protestants anglais. Vivent
James et Louis, et apportez-moi le sacre Journal!"

"Oui, Monsieur, tout de suite! Si favais connu qui vous et&s "

"Mes soupgons n'ont pas &6 plus petits que les votres, mais Us sont
disparus. Cet 6pouvantail-ci parait fare loyd £ Baltimore, mais il riest pas
catholique: s'il fait de la peine, je le tuerai ..."

"Oui, Monsieur!" said the delighted priest. "Mais out, fapporterai le
Journal tout de suite!" He ran to unlock an iron-bound chest in one corner
of the cabin.

"What in the name of Heav'n doth this mean?" cried Ebenezer, in an
anguish of doubt

"What it means," said his companion, "is that I am not this Henry you
took me for, nor yet the Timothy Mitchell I am called. I am Monsieur
Casteene!"

"Who?"

"Your fame hath not yet spread to London, sir," the priest laughed from
the comer. He fetched a sheaf of manuscript from the chest and turned
scornfully to the Laureate. "Monsieur Casteene is known throughout the
length and breadth of the provinces as the Grand Enemy of the English.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 387 ]

He hath been Governor of Canada, and fought both Andros and Nicholson
in New York/'

"Until my enemies gained favor with King Louis and undid me," the
other said bitterly.

"Monsieur Casteene then fled to the Indians," Smith went on. "He lives
among them, and hath taken to wife an Indian woman "

"Two Indian women, Father Smith: 'tis a sin God will forgive, in return
for the massacre of Schenectady."

"I had heard you were on Colonel Hermann's manor in Cecil County,"
said the priest. "Is't possible Colonel Hermann too is more than just Lord
Baltimore's man?"

"With faith all things are possible; at least he denied my presence, and
disclaimed any knowledge of the Naked Indians."

"Then thou'rt traitors, the pair of you!" cried Ebenezer, "Thou'rt a
traitor," he said specifically to his companion, "and I took you to be my
dear friend Burlingame! How much doth this discrepancy explain!"

The man with the knife laughed a brief, derisive laugh and held out his
hand to Father Smith for the Journal. "Permettez-moi regarder ce livre
merveilleux pour lequel fat risqut ma vie."

The priest gave it to him eagerly, whereupon, without hesitation,
Burlingame struck him such a blow upon the back of his neck that he fell
senseless to the floor.

"I had not thought him such a fool! Find rope to bind him with, Eben,
and we shall see what have we here ere we retire."

25: FURTHER PASSAGES FROM CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH'S
SECRET HISTORIE OF THE VOIAGE UP THE BAY OF
CHESAPEAKE: DORCHESTER DISCOVERED, AND HOW
THE CAPTAIN FIRST SET FOOT UPON IT

"COME, BIND HIM UP," BURLINGAME REPEATED, SPREADING THE JOURNAL

open on the table. "Already he hath commenced to stir." But seeing that
Ebenezer was still too disorganized to act, he fetched some rope himself
from a shelf nearby and bound the priest's hands and feet. "At least help
me lift him into a chair!"

[ 388 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Reviving, Father Smith winced and blinked, and then stared sullenly at
the Journal. He found his voice before the poet did.

"Who are you, then— John Coode?"

Burlingame laughed. "Only Tim Mitchell, as I said at the outset, and a
loyal friend of Baltimore, if not King Louis and the Pope. Thou'rt a stiff
neck poorer for your lack of faith, my friend/' To Ebenezer, whose turbu-
lent features betrayed his lingering doubts, he explained further that rumors
had been rife in Maryland since 1692 of the legendary Monsieur Casteene's
presence near the Pennsylvania border. Colonel Augustine Hermann of
Bohemia Manor in Cecil County had denied the presence of both
Casteene and the so-called Stabbernowles, or "Naked Indians" of the north,
but so great was the fear of general massacre at the hands of the French
and the Indians— especially in the light of Maryland and Virginia's
persistent refusal to aid the beleaguered Governor Fletcher of New York
and the mutual distrust among all the provincial governments — that the
rumors still persisted, and the most bizarre details of the Casteene legend,
such as that of the scarified monogram on his chest, were widely believed.
"I scratched those letters with my dirk this evening in Oxford/7 he con-
cluded, displaying them again in the candlelight. "See how fresh they are?
TTwas a card I'd not have played in the light of day!"

Ebenezer sat weakly in a chair. "B'm'faith, how you alarmed me! I know
you not from one hour to the next!"

"Nor should you try. Pour out a round of this admirable wine and reflect
on what I told you at the inn some hours ago." He clapped the priest on
the shoulder. " 'Tis an ungrateful guest that binds his host to a chair for the
night, but there's naught for't. Besides, 'tis for that cause wherefor you'd
die, and not by half so sore a martyrdom as gelding—n'est-ce pas?" He
laughed at the priest's expression of disgust, and when the wine was poured,
the guests commenced to read together the verso (which was in fact the
original recto) of their prize:

Having received such cordidl use [so this fragment of the Historic began]
at the hands of those Salvages at Accomack & those at the River of
wighcocomoco,<wesetoutagaineforthemaine.

'That is the town of Hicktopeake he refers to," Ebenezer volunteered,
though in truth he was entertaining such a mixture of feelings towards his
fonner tutor that he spoke only out of a sort of shyness. "The Laughing
King of whom I told you. The other Indians I know naught of."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 389 ]

"There are two rivers called Wicomfco in Maryland," Burlingame said
thoughtfully. "One near St. Mary's County on the Western Shore and one
below Dorchester County. Methinks 'tis the latter he intends, if he coasted
up the Bay from Accomac."

. . . but for want of fresh water, in two dales had perforce to seeke out land,
that we might replenishe our supplie. We found some Isles, dl uninhabited &
many in number, falling with a high land upon the maine.

"Now where do you suppose that is?" mused Burlingame. "I know of
no high-landed islands in the Bay."

"Haply 'twas but the Calvert cliffs he chanced on," Ebenezer suggested,
recalling his Island of the Seven Cities. "Let's read on."

Upon waying and going ashoar, we chanc'd on a pond of fresh water, but iv°*
was surpassing warme. Howbeit, we were so verie thirstie, that maugre my. coun-
sell to the contrarie, to witt, that the water was doubtlesse fowle, naught w* doe
but my companie must file there barricoes withal, & drinke therefrom, till that
there verie gutts did slushe about. This they learn' d to regrett, but of that, more
anon.

From Wighcocomoco to this place, dl the coast is but low broken Isles of
Moras, a myle or two in breadth, & tenne or twelve in length, & joule and stink-
ing by reason of the stagnant waters therein. Add to wcl1, the dre is beclowded
with vile meskitoes, that sucke at a mans bloud, as though they had never eate
before. It is forsooth no countrie, for any save the Sdvage . . .

"That picture doth apply to one place only," laughed Burlingame, who
had read the passage aloud. "Do you know it, Father?"

And the priest, his historical curiosity aroused despite his circumstances,
smiled stiffly and nodded: "The Dorset marshes."

"Aye," Burlingame confirmed. "The Hooper Islands, Bloodsworth Island,
and South Marsh. There is a morsel for your epic, Ebenezer: the first white
man to set foot on Dorset County."

Ebenezer made perfunctory acknowledgment, but pointed out that as

yet the Captain had not gone ashore and perhaps would pass the county by.

• He showed less petulance in his reply to the priest, who professed great

interest in the document and chagrin at having been thitherto unaware of

its existence, and for his sake read the remainder of it aloud.

"Being thus refreshed, despite my warnings, in moving over to other Isles, we
incounter'd the winde & waters so much increased with thunder, lightning, &
raine, that for all my souldiers & my selfe reefd & belay'd the saytes
& lines, our mast & sayle went by the board. Such mightie waves overrack'd us in
that smalle barge, that with great persuasions I indue" d our Gentlemen to
occupie them selves with freeing out the water, in their hatts, for that else we had

[ 39° ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

fownder'd & surike. We anchor* d, being not neare any place that promised safe
harbour, and there we sat a miserable two daies, while the gusts did blowe, with
little to nourish our selves withal, save the vile water in the barricoes.

"This same water, the w^ my men had taken against my warning, prov'd to be
foule indeed, for that upon slaking therewith there thirstt all the companie did
growe wondrous grip'd of there bowetts, and loose of there bladders, & took a
weakness of there reins, so that they still had need of making water, & of voiding
there severall bummes. Little my men did all the day long, & the night, while
that we rode thus at anchor, but besmirch them selves. At length, the
-wether being warm, if squallie, I did order one & all to divest them selves of there
breeches, the wch -were beshitt past rescue, and cast them to the fishes. This they
all did, but with much compleynt, most markedlie from my rivdl Burlingame,
who looses no opening to sowe the seedes of discontent & faction."

"Thank Heav'n he is still among the party!" Burlingame exclaimed. "I
feared old John had done him in after Accomac."

44 Tis no light matter to choose betwixt the two/' Ebenezer remarked.
"Captain Smith is undeniably resourceful, and no leader can indulge
factitiousness save at his peril/'

"True enough for you," Burlingame replied curtly. "He's not your
ancestor. For me there is no problem in the choice."

"We've no certain knowledge he is your ancestor, either," the poet said.
"When all's said and done, 'tis a marvelous slender chance, is't not?"

This observation so plainly injured Burlingame that despite the possible
justification for his unkindness Ebenezer at once regretted making it, and
apologized.

"No matter." Burlingame waved him away. "Read on."

"Being left then, with there bummes expos'd, I did command, that they set
them selves over the gunwales, inasmuch as the Bay of Chesapeake was of greate
size, and c* accommodate them better then our barge. Yet this new command
did little ease our plight, for that dbeit they dropp'd there matter to the fishes, -
the dre round about was no lesse fouVd by there joynt labours. Naught c* our
jy of Physick do to improve them, and I did wish heartilie to be on shoar, where
with the sapp of the sweet-gumme tree & sundrie other herbes, w°*> grewe a-plen-
tie in the woods thereabouts, I c* have brew'd a decoction, that had bound the
lot of them costive for a fortnight. Forsooth, things did worsen yet, for that the
sillie men w* not restrayne there thirst, but still returned and drank farther of the
water, whereon there fluxes & gripes did intensifie apace. Onely two of our num-
ber shew'd no sign of the maladie, namelie my selfe, that had not deign'd to
drinkeof the barricoes, but had instead made my selfe to chewe upon raw fishes,
and friend Burlingame, that had drunke enough for three, but that must needs
have had a grand hold on his reins, for that he never did besmirch him selfe
throughout those foule two daies.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 391 1

"When the storme at length overblewe us, and the -wether againe shew'd faire,
I did with all haste order, that the sayle be repair' d, and this the companie did
with right good will, using of there shirts for clouts. They were most readie to
abandon the maine, and sayle for some shoar, albeit they were now naked as
Father Adam, so as to put food & cleanlie water into there bellies, and pass
off there fluxes at last. For the extremitie of gusts, thunder, rayne, storms, & ill
wether, we did call those Straites, wherein we had for so long layn, Limbo, but I
think, with all the farting and ill businesse that did pass there, we had better
calVd them Purgatorio.

After a surpassing clumsie daye of sayling, making smaHe headway, for the
crewe must continudlie hang there bummes abeame, we fell with a prettie con-
venient river on the East, cdled Cuskarawaok . . ."

"That is a word from the Nanticoke tongue/' Father Smith interrupted.
"I have not learnt its meaning, but in old times it was applied to that same
river we call the Nanticoke today/'

"Ffaith, then!" Burlingame laughed. "'Tis precious little grcrand he
gained for all those evil days!" He explained to Ebenezej that the
Nanticoke River, which marks the boundary between Dorchester and
Somerset Counties, empties into Tangier Sound conjointly with the
Wicomico, from where, the record seemed to imply, Smith had departed
several days previously.

"AZZ that made the day attractive to me [Ebenezer read on], for it were other-
wise malodourous enow, was, that Burlingarhes bowells did seem to commence
troubling him, for that he did still wander hither to yon in the barge, his face
shewing ever more discomfort, and crost & recrost his leggs, and his want of
composure was a tastie thing to watch. When that he shd findlie let fie, I guess' d
it wd prove a spectacle in sooth, by reason of his greate corpulencie, and the
lengthie space he had held fast his reins . . "

"Cruel man," said Burlingame, "to savor so the wretch's plight! And
thou'rt reading with the same ungentle relish, Ebenl"

"Beg pardon." Ebenezer smiled. " 'Tis that the wonder oft stirs my in-
terest as I read. I fancy he is about to land on Dorset."

And in a tone somewhat less partial he continued:

"We made straightwaye for shoar, but cd by no means land, seeing a great
bodie of Salvages appear from the woods, making everie signe of hostilitie.
Whenas they sawe what manner of men we were, not having seen the like before,
they ran as amaz'd from place to place, divers got into the tops of trees, and they
were not sparing of there arrowes, nor the greatest passion they cd expresse of
there anger. Long they shot, we still ryding at Anchor without there reatch mak-
ing dl the signes of friendship we c*. But this was a hard matter, inasmuch as for
everie cheerie wave of the hand I signdl'd them, some souldier or Gentkmen in

[ 392 1 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

my companie must needs let goe a fart, w°u the Salvages did take as an affront,
and threwe more arrowes. •

"Next day they, return' dt all unarm* d, and -with everie one a basket, and danc'd
in a ring, to drawe us on shoar: but seeing there was naught in them save villainie,
we discharg'd a volley of muskets chargd 'with pistoll shot, whereat they all lay
tumbling on the grownd, creeping some one way, some another, into a greate clus-
ter of reedes hard by, where there companies lay in Ambuscado. We waited, and
it seeming they had left the place, we way'd & approach* d the shoar, for that all
were eager to quitt for a time our barge. My thought was, to land as quietlie as
possible, catch what food & fresh water we might, & then to flie to some more
cordiall place: for that reason I did command, that whereas none among my
crewe c? leave off his bumme-shotts, the wch wd surelie give notice of our coming,
then everie man, that felt the need on him, must thrust his buttockes by the
board, so far as to the water, and thus immers'd, do what he wd. But the first to
attempt this, one Anas Todkill a souldier, had no sooner wet his hammes, then
he was stung athwart the tayle by a greate Sea-Nettle, a sort of white jellie-fish wch
doth occur in number in these waters, raysing upon his buttockes a red welt, and
causing him payne. Whereafter, it was onely by dint of much intreatie, that I
got any other man to do the same. As for Burlingame, the imminence of his
coming defecation shew'd over all his face, and he durst not even speake, lest he
expload; but the business of the Sea-Nettle did give him such a fright, he wrest? d
with him selfe, to hold on but a minute more, when that we shd be ashoar.

"The prowe of our barge striking land (the w°h was but reedes & mudd), I
flung our anchor as far inland as I cd, and we did make readie to disembark. As
-was my wont, I steppfd up on the spritt, and wd have leapt ashoar, for that I still
reserve the privilege of stepping first on everie new-found grownd, and this place
was to be no exception. But Burlingame, in his passion to get off the vessell, to
the end of jettisoning his filthie cargoe, did rudelie push me aside, for all I was his
Captain and erst his Saviour, and assum'd the place ahead. I was on the instant
wroth, at his impertinencie, and w* have layd hands on him, but that at the same
moment a troup of Salvages leapt from some scrubbie growth near by, and
snatch' d up the anchor pendant, purposing thereby to pull us high & drie, and
capture us & our vessell as well With this turn of affaires, I was content that
Burlingame s*d remayne in the van, to afford the rest of us the protection of his
fatt carcase"

"Ah God/' murmured Burlingame, "I fear my ancestor is in a pickle!"
The proper strategic [Ebenezer continued! was to frye a charge of shot at the
heathens to drive them loose, but they were nigh upon us, and I confesse we had
not a musket loaded, for that I had thought the shoar vacated of Salvages. Then
I might well have cut the pendant, and so rid us of them, but I was loath to
sacrifice our anchor, that had serv'd us well in the storme just past, and w0* we
s™ doubtlesse need againe. Besides w°\ the Salvages had appear9 d on such a sud-
den, I scarce had time to think aright. In fine, I did not choose either of these
courses, but snatch* d our end of the pendant, and handing it back among the
crewe, we pulTd in a line against the Salvages, to regayn our anchor & our liber-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 393 ]

tie. The Salvages, luckilie, were unarm9 d, hoping to have us ashoar without difft-
cultie, and thus we were not expos'd to there arrowes. Burlingame was too pos-
sess9 d by feare to aid us, but stood dl witlesse on the bow, and c* nowise step back
into the vessell, for that dl of us were crowded behind, heaving on the rope.

"The tugg-o'-war that then insued had been a sporting match, w°n methinks
we had won, were it that naught had interfear'd with the murtherous game. But
the Salvages giving out with terrible whoops & hollowings, did so smite with
fear this Burlingame, that at last he forewent entire the hold of his reins, and
standing yet in our prowe like unto an uglie figure-head, he did let flie the treasure
he had been those severdLl daies a-hoarding. It was my ill fortune to be hard be-
hind him, and moreover, crowch'd down beneath his mightie bumme, so as to
better brace my feet for pulling, and looking up at that instant of time, to see
whether Burlingame was yet with us, I was in a trice beshitt, so much so, that I
cd by no meanes see out of my eyes, or speake out of my mowth. Then the Sal-
vages gave a great pull on the pendant, and the deck all bemufd, I did loose the
purchase of my feet, and sayling betwixt Burlingames legs, did end face downe in
the mud of the shoar. This same Burlingame thus knocked from off his bdlance,
he fell after, and sat him square upon my head.

"Directlie I freed my mowth of turd & mud, I hottow'd for my souldiers to
load & fyre upon the Sdvages, but those same Sdvages did leap straightway upon
me, and upon Burlingame as well, and imploying us to sheeld them & as
hostages, demanded by signes the surrender of the companie. I order'd them to
shoot & be damnfd, but they were loath to fyre, for jeare of hitting me, and so
we did surrender our selves up to the Salvage, and were led prisoner to his town.

"Thus was it, in a manner not my wont, I first touched the shoar of this scurvie
place, whereof an ampler relation doth follow . . ."

The final passages Ebenezer could scarcely read for laughing; even the
captive priest could not restrain his mirth. For a moment Burlingame
seemed not to realize that the recitation was done, but then he sat up
quickly.

"Is that the end?"

" Tis the end of this portion/' Ebenezer sighed, wiping his eyes. 'Tfaith,
such intrepidity! And by what a marvelous means my county was dis-
covered!"

"But God in Heav'n," cried Burlingame, "this is no stopping-place!" He
snatched up the Journal to look for himself. "That wretched, hapless man-
how I suffer for him! And I tell you, Eben; though I do not share his form,
with every new episode I feel more certain Sir Henry is my forefather. I
felt it when first I learnt of him from those ladies that I saved, and more so
when I read his Privie JournalL How much more now, then, that we have
him in Dorchester! He is halfway up the Chesapeake, is he not? And 'twas
there that Captain Salmon fished me out!"

[ 594 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"It is a curious proximity, forsooth," Ebenezer allowed, "but nearly fifty
years divide the two events, if I guess aright. And since we know John Smith
returned anon to Jamestown, we've no proof Sir Henry was marooned be-
hind."

"You'd as well prove to this Jesuit that St. Joseph was a cuckold,"
Burlingame laughed. "I am as sure of my progenitor as he is of Christ's,
though the exact line of descent we've yet to learn. 'Sheart, I'd give an arm
to hear the finish of that tale!"

These remarks aroused Father Smith's curiosity, and he entreated
Burlingame to explain the mystery before departing.

"Think not you'll see us go so soon!" Henry replied, but their attention
to the history having dispelled the general ill will among the three, he went
on to say that though his name was Timothy Mitchell he was but a foster
child of Captain William Mitchell, and had reason to suspect that Sir Henry
Burlingame was in some wise his ancestor. He then favored the priest with
a full account of his researches and the fruit they had borne thus far, but
despite this general cordiality with which the evening closed, he insisted
that Father Smith be released only long enough to relieve himself under
careful guard, after which the unfortunate priest was obliged to spend the
night bound upright in his chair while the two visitors shared his bed.

Nevertheless, before the candle had been extinguished for half an hour,
Ebenezer was the only man in the cabin still awake. Never an easy sleeper,
he was additionally distracted this night by the presences of his friend and
his unwilling host— specifically because the former (in sleep, it is to be pre-
sumed) held his hand in a grip from which the poet was too embarrassed
to pull free, and the latter snored; but more generally because he could not
as yet reconcile and assimilate all the aspects of Burlingame's character to
which he had been exposed, and because Father Smith's apparent connec-
tion with the French and Indians, while it did not in itself reflect discredit
on Lord Baltimore, nevertheless cast a new and complicated light upon
that gentleman's endeavor. Nor were these troublesome reflections the sum
of his diversion: never far from his mind was the image of Joan Toast, her
flashing eyes and spirited limbs! Despite Burlingame's skepticism, Ebene-
zer was confident of Susan Warren's veracity; he fully expected to find
his beloved (for so he thought of Joan Toast) waiting for him when
he arrived at Maiden, if not on the morrow then surely two days hence.
When, after such a harrowing odyssey as his—and who knew what
peregrinations of poor Joan's?— they were at last reunited on his own
estate-to-be, what would ensue? There was fuel to fire a poet's fancy!

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 395 ]

In short, he could not sleep, and though as a rule he would have dwelt
with his insomnia until dawn, Burlingame's handgrip made the contest less
than equal. Finally, therefore, after an hour's unpleasantness, he summoned
courage enough to leave the bed. From the wood-coals on the hearth he
lit a new candle, and making free with the sleeping Jesuit's ink and quill, he
spread out his ledger-book to ease himself with verse.

But for the sober thoughts that filled his head he could find no fit articu-
lation; what he composed, simply because he had previously entered on the
opposite page certain notes upon the subject, was nothing more sublime
or apropos than two score couplets having to do with the Salvage Indians
of America. The feat afforded him no solace, but at least it wearied him
through and through: when he could hold his eyes open no longer he blew
out the candle, and leaving the bed to Burlingame, laid his head upon his
ledger-book and slept.

26: THE JOURNEY TO CAMBRIDGE, AND THE
LAUREATE'S CONVERSATION BY THE WAY

WHEN MORNING CAME, BURLINGAME FREED FATHER SMITH FROM HIS

bonds and took it upon himself to prepare a breakfast while the priest
exercised his aching limbs. All the while, however, he kept the Journal near
at hand, and despite the Jesuit's disclaimer of any further intent to stop
them, he insisted that the priest be bound again when the meal was finished
and they were ready to depart, nor would he listen to Ebenezer's pleas for
clemency.

"You infer the rest of mankind from yourself/' he chided. "Because you
would not try farther to obstruct me if you were in his position, you believe
he would not either. To which I reply, my reasoning is identical to yours,
and I would have me back the Journal ere you reached the Choptank
River/'

"But he will perish! 'Tis as much as murthering him!"

"No such thing," scoffed Burlingame. "If he is a proper priest he will
be missed at once by his parishioners, who will seek him out and have him
loose ere midday. If not, they will repay neglect with neglect, as his God
would have it— or rather, his Order."

This last, a reference to the priest's startling remark of the evening past,

SOT-WEED FACTOR

he directed with a smile to Father Smith, who sat impassively in his chair,
and added, "We are obliged to you for bed and board, sir, and your
unimpeachable Jerez. You may look to see John Coode in trouble soon,
and know that you have done your part, albeit reluctantly." He ushered
Ebenezer to the door. "Adieu, Father: when you commence your holy
war, spare my friend here, who hath pled in your behalf. As for me,
Monsieur Casteene himself could never find me. Ignatius vobiscum"

"Er vobiscum diabolus" replied the priest.

Thus they left, Ebenezer too ashamed to bid their host farewell, and,
after saddling their horses, struck out along a road that, so Burlingame de-
clared, curved southward in wide arc to the Choptank River ferry,, whence
they planned to cross to Cambridge, inquire the whereabouts of William
Smith, and then proceed to Maiden. It was a magnificent autumn day,
brisk and bright, and whatever the Laureate's mood, Burlingame's was
clearly buoyant.

"One more portion of Smith's history to find!" he cried as their horses
ambled down the road. "Only think on't: I may soon learn who I am!"

"Let us hope this William Smith is less refractory," the poet replied. "One
may acquire more guilt in learning who he is than the answer can atone
for."

Apparently chastened, Burlingame rode on some minutes in silence be-
fore he tried again to begin a conversation.

"Methinks Lord Baltimore was ill-advised on the character of that Jesuit,
but a general cannot know all of his lieutenants. There is a saying among
the Papists, Do not judge the entire priesthood by a priest. 'Tis to the point
here, is't not?"

"There is another from the Gospels," said Ebenezer. "By their fruits ye
shall know them. . . ."

"Thotfrt too severe, my friend!" Burlingame showed a measure of
impatience. "Is't that you did not sleep enough last night?"

The Laureate blushed. "Last night I had in mind some verses, and wrote
them down lest I forget them."

"Indeed! I'm pleased to heart; you have been too long away from your
muse."

The solicitude in his friend's voice removed,, at least for the time being,
Ebenezer's perturbation, and, though he suspected that he was being
humored, he smiled and with some shyness said, "Their subject is the salvage
Indian, that I am much impressed by."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 397 ]

"Then out on't, I must hear them! I too am a great admirer of the
salvage."

After some hesitation Ebneezer consented, not especially because he
thought Burlingame's eagerness was genuine, but rather because in the
welter of conflicting sentiment he experienced towards his friend, and de-
spite Burlingame' s occasional criticism of his verse, his poetic gift was the
only ground that in his relations with his former tutor he felt he could
stand upon firmly and without abashment. He fished out his notebook
from the large pocket of his coat and, leaving his mare to walk without
direction, opened to the freshly written couplets.

" Twas a salvage we saw yesterday morning that prompted me," he ex-
plained, "the one you showed me chasing after deer."

"Indeed,, the brave Piscataway!" Burlingame recalled. "He was a hand-
some buck, now, was he not? I rather envy any lass he sets his eye on!"

"Here are the verses, whatever their worth," Ebenezer said quickly, and
began to read, his voice jogging with the steps of his horse:

"Scarce had I left the Captains Board
And taking Horse, made Tracks toward
The Chesapeake, -when, giving Chase
To flighty Deer, a horrid Face

Came into View: a Salvage 'twas

We stay'd our Circumbendibus

To look on Him, and He on u&.

O'ercoming soon my first Surprize,

I set myself to scrutinize

His Visage mid, his Form exotick

Barb'rous Air, and Dress erotick,

His brawny Shoulders, greas'd and bare

His Member, all devoid of Hair

And swinging free, his painted Skin

And naked Chest, inviting Sin

With Ladies w/io, their Beauty faded,

Husbands dead, or Pleasures jaded,

Fly from Virtues narrow Way

Into the Forest, there to lay

With Salvages, to their Damnation

Sinning by their Copulation,

Lewdness, Lust, and Fornication,

All at once . . "

"Well writ!" cried Burlingame. "Save for your preachment at the last,
'tis much the same sentiment as my own." He laughed. "I do suspect you

[ 598 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

had more on your mind last night than just the heathen: all that love-talk
makes me yearn for my sweet Portia!"

"Stay," the poet cautioned at once. "Fall not into the vulgar error of
the critics, that judge a work ere they know the whole of it. I go on to
speculate whence came the Indian."

"Your pardon," Burlingame said. "If the rest is excellent as the first,
thou'rt a poet in sooth."

Ebenezer flushed with pleasure and read on, somewhat more forcefully:

'"Whence came this barb'rous Salvage Race,
That wanders yet o'er MARYLANDS Face?
Descend they all from those old Sires,
Remarked by Plato and such like Liars
From lost Atlantis, sunken yet
Beneath the Ocean, cold and wet?
Or is he wiser who ascribes
Their Genesis to those ten Tribes
Of luckless Jews, that broke away
From Israel, and to this Day
Have left no Traces, Signs, or Clews —
Are Salvages but beardless Jews?
Or are they sprung, as some maintain,
From that same jealous, incestuous Cain,
Who with twin Sister fain had lay'd
And whose own Brother anon he slay'd:
Fleeing then Jehovah's Wrath
Did wend his cursed, rambling Path
To MARYLANDS Doorsill, there to hide
In penance for his Fratricide,
And hiding, found no livelier Sport
Than siring Heathens, tall and short?
Still others hold, these dark-skinn'd Folk
Escapfd the Deluge all unsoak'd
That carrfd off old Noahs Ark
Upon its long and wat'ry Lark,
And drcrwn'd all Manner of Men save Two: \
The Sailors in Old Noahs Crew (

(That after all were but a Few), )

And this same brawny Salvage Host,
Who, safe behind fair MARYLANDS Coast,
Saw other Mortals sink and die
Whilst they remained both high and dry.
Another Faction claims to trace
The Hist'ry of this bare-Burmrid Race
Back to Mankinds Pucelage,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 399 ]

That Ovid calls the Golden Age:

When kindly Saturn rul'd the Roost.

Their learned Fellows have deduc'd

The Salvage Home to be that Garden

Wherein three Sisters play'd at Warden

Over Heras Golden Grove,

Whose Apples were a Treasure-Trove:

That Orchard robb'd by Hercules,

The Garden of Hesperides;

While other Scholards, no less wise,

Uphold the Earthly Paradise —

Old Adams Home, and Eves to boot,

Wherein they gorg'd forbidden Fruit —

To be the Source and Fountainhead

Of Salvag'ry. Some, better read

In Arthurs Tales, have settVd on

The Blessed Isles of Avalon,

And others say the fundamental

Flavoring is Oriental,

Or that mayhap ancient Viking,

Finding MARYLAND to his liking,

Stay'd, and fathered red-skinn'd Horsemen:

One Part Salvage, Two Parts Norsemen.

Others say the grand Ambitions

Of the restless old Phoenicians

Led 'that hardy Sailor Band

To the Shores of MARYLAND,

In Ships so cramm'd with Man and Beast

No Room remain' d for Judge or Priest:

There, with Lasses and Supplies,

The Men commenced to colonize

This foreign Shore in Manner dastard,

All their Offspring being Bastard.

Finally, if any Persons

Unpersuaded by these Versions

Of the Salvages Descent

Should ask still for the Truth anent

Their Origins — why, such as these,

That are so damned hard to please,

I send to Mephistopheles,

Who engendered in the Fires of Hell

The Indians, and them as well!"

"Now, that is all damned clever!" Burlingame exclaimed when Ebenezer
had finished. "Whether 'twas the hardships of your crossing or a half year' s

[ ^OO ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

added age, I swear thou'rt twice the poet you were in Plymouth. The lines
on Cain I thought especially well-wrought."

" Tis kind of you to praise the piece/7 Ebenezer said. "Haply 'twill be
a part of the Marylandiad."

"I would I could turn a verse so well! But say, while 'tis fresh in my
mind, doth persons really rhyme with versions, and folk with soak'd?"

"Indeed yes/' the poet replied.

"But would it not be better/' Burlingame persisted cordially, "to rhyme
versions with dispersions, say, and folk with soak? Of course, I am no poet."

"One need not be a hen to judge an egg/' Ebenezer allowed. "The fact
oft is, the rhymes you name are at once better and worse than mine: better,
because they sound more nearly like the words they rhyme with; and worse,
because such closeness is not the present fashion. Dispersion and version:
'tis wanting in character, is't not? But person and version— there is surprise,
there is color, there is witl In fine, there is a perfect Hudibrastic."

"Hudibrastic, is it? I have heard the folk in Locket's speak well of
Hudibras, but I always thought it tedious myself. What is't you mean by
Hudibrastic?"

Ebenezer could scarcely believe that Burlingame was really ignorant of
Hudibrastic rhyme or anything else, but so pleasant was the reversal of their
usual roles that he found it easy to put by his skepticism.

"A Hudibrastic rhyme," he explained, "is a rhyme that is close, but not
just harmonious. Take the noun wagon; what would you rhyme with it?"

"Why, now, let's see," Burlingame mused. "Methinks flagon would serve,
or dragon, wouldn't you say?"

"Not at all," smiled Ebenezer. " Tis too expected; 'tis what any poetaster
might suggest— no offense, you understand."

"None whatever."

"Nay, to wagon you must rhyme bag in, or sagging: almost, you see, but
not quite.

The Indians catt their wafry Wagon
Canoe, a Vessel none can brag on.

Wagon, brag on^do you follow me?"

"I grasp the principle," Burlingame declared, "and I recall such rhymes
as that in Hudibras; but I doubt me I could e'er apply it." '

"Why, of course you can! It wants but courage, Henry. Take quarrel,
now: The Man and I commenced to quarrel What shall we rhyme with it?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 401 ]

Burlingame pondered the problem for a while. "What would you say to
snarl?" he ventured at last.

"The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel:
I to grumble, he to snarl"

"The line is good/' replied the Laureate, "and bespeaks some wit. But
the rhyme is humorless. Quarrel, snarl— nay, 'tis too close."

"Sorrel, then?" asked Burlingame, apparently warming to the sport.

"The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel
Who'd ride the Roan, and who the Sorrel"

"E'en wittier!" the poet applauded. "Tis better than Tom Trent could
pen, with Dick Merriweather to help him! But you've still no Hudibrastic.
Quarrel, snarl; quarrel, sorrel."

"I yield," said Burlingame.

"Consider this, then:

The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel
Anent the Style of our Apparel.

Quarrel, apparel: that is Hudibrastic."

"Quarrel, appareir Burlingame made a wry face. "They clash and

jingle!"

''Precisely. The more the clash, the better the couplet/'
"Aha, then!" cried the tutor. "What says my Laureate to this?

The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel
Who'd ride the Roan and -who the Dapple.

Is't not a thing of beauty?""

"Quarrel and dapple?" Ebenezer exclaimed.

"Doth it not jangle like the brassy bells of Hades?"

"Nay, nay, 'twill never do!" Ebenezer shook his head firmly. "I had
thought you'd caught the essence oft, but the words must needs have some
proximity if they're to jangle. Quarrel and dapple are ships in different
oceans: they cannot possibly collide, and a collision is what we seek."

"Then try this," Burlingame suggested, not in the least daunted by the
Laureate's chiding.

"The Man and I commenc'd to quarrel
Whose turn it was to ivoo the Barrel."

"Barrel! Barrel, you say?" Ebenezer's face grew red. "What is this barrel?
How would you use it?"

[ AQ2 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

" Tis a Hudibrastic," replied Burlingame with a smile. "I'd use it to piss
in."

"B'm'faith, 'tis a pisser at that!" He laughed uncomfortably. "Tis the
pissingest Hudibrastic ever I've heard!"

'Will you hear more?" asked Burlingame. "I am a diligent student of
jangling rhyme."

"Piss on't," the poet declared. "Thy lesson's done!"

"Nay, I am just grasping the spirit oft! Haply I'll take up versifying my-
self someday, for't seems no backbreaking chore."

"But you know the saying, Henry: A poet is born, not made."

"Out on't!" Burlingame scoffed. "Were you not made Laureate ere you'd
penned a proper verse? I'll wager I could rhyme with the cleverest, did I
choose to put my nose to't."

"No man knows better than I your various gifts," Ebenezer said in an
injured tone. "Yet your true poet may have no other gift than verse."

"Only try me," Burlingame challenged. "Name me some names, and hear
me rhyme."

"Very well, but there's more to verse than matching words. You must
couple me a line to the line I fling you."

"Fling away thy lines, and see what fine fish you hook on 'em!"

"Stand fast," warned Ebenezer, "for Til start you with a hard one: Then
did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling"

"That is from Hudibras" Burlingame observed, "but I forget what Butler
rhymed with't. Dwelling, dwelling— ah, 'tis no chore at all:

Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,
Which scarce repay7 d the Work of Selling.

"Too close," said Ebenezer. "Give us a Hudibrastic."
"Your Hudibrastics will break my jaw! Howbeit, if 'tis a jangle you wish,
I shall shudder the ears off you:

Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,
Riding like a demon'd Hellion.

Are you jarred?"

"It fills the gap," Ebenezer admitted. "But the difference 'twixt poet
and coxcomb is precisely that the latter stops gaps like a ship fitter caulking
seams, merely to keep the boat afloat, while the former doth his work as
doth a man with a maid: he fills the gap, but with vigor, finesse, and care;
there's beauty and delight as well as utility in his plugging."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 4°3 ]

" 'Sheart, my friend," Burlingame said respectfully, "you go on like the
gods themselves! How would a Laureate poet fill this gap, prithee, that
yawns like the pit of Hell?"

Ebenezer replied, " 'Twas filled by Sam Butler in this wise-observe the
art, now, the collision:

Then did Sir Knight abandon Dwelling,
And out he rode a Colonelling."

"Ah, stay!" cried Burlingame. "This is too much! A Co-lo-nelling! Tis
a fabrication— aye, a Chimaera! Co-lo-nelling, is't! Why did not Mister
Butler, if he was so enamored of his unnatural word^ call it feernelling, as't
should be called, and rhyme from there?"

"Why not indeed? What would you rhyme with kernelling, Henry?"

" Tis naught of a chore to me," Burlingame scoffed. "To rhyme with
kernelling Well, kernelling " He hesitated.

"You see," smiled Ebenezer. "In his divine inspiration the poet chose a
rhyme for dwelling that is at once a rhyme and a Hudibrastic, and so
avoided your quandary. Yield, now; there is no rhyme for kernelling!9

"I yield," Burlingame said with apparent humility. "I can get me the
first line— Then went Sir Knight a kernelling— but can't rhyme the infernal
thing."

The two travelers exchanged sudden glances.

"Out upon't," Ebenezer muttered, "the lesson's done."

But Burlingame was delighted to see his unintentional coup de maitre;
he went on to declaim theatrically from his horse:

"Then went Sir Knight a kernelling,
Pursuing all infernal Things,
Inflam'd by Hopes eternal Springs
Through Winterings and Vernallings
(As testify his Journallings
And similar Diurnallings,
Not mentioning Nocturnallings) . , ."

"Desist!" Ebenezer commanded. "Spin me no more of this doggerel,
Henry, lest I heave my breakfast upon the highway!"

"Forgive me," Burlingame laughed. "I was inspired."

"You were baiting me/' the Laureate said indignantly. "Be not puffed
up o'er such trifling achievement, the like of which we poets must better
fifty times a page! You have a certain knack for rhyming, clear enough; but

[404] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

think not you can rhyme any word in Mother English, for a poet will name
you words that have not their like in the language/'

"Ha! Oh! Ha!" Burlingame cried with sudden glee. "I have hatched
more! I'God, they crowd my fancy like the shoats to Portia's nipples!

Now lend me, Muse, supernal Wings
To sing Sir Knights Hiberndlings,
His Doublings and his Terndlings,
His Forwardings and Sterrutllings;
To sing of his Hesternallings,
And also Hodiernallings,
Internal and external Things,
Both brief and diuturnd Things,
And even sempiternd Things,
His dark and his lucernd Things,
Maternd and Paterndlings,
Sorord and Fraternd Things,
His blue and red Pimpernellings,
And sundry paraphernd Things "

"You do not love me!" Ebenezer said angrily. "I'll hear no more!"

"Nay, I beg you"— Burlingame laughed— "fob me not off so!"

"Sinful pridel" the poet chided, when he had recovered something of his
composure.

" 'Twas but in jest, Eben; if it vexed you, I am contrite. Tis you who
are the teacher now, not I, and you may take what steps you will. In truth
you've taught me more than erst I knew."

" 'Tis clear your talent wants snaffle and curb in lieu of the crop," said
Ebenezer.

"Will you go on, then?"

Ebenezer considered for a moment and then agreed. "So be't, but no
more teasing. I shall administer to you the severest test of the rhymer's art:
the slipperiest crag on the rocky face of Parnassus!"

"Administer at will," said Burlingame; "if 'tis a point of rhyme I swear
there's none can best me, for I have learnt old Mother English to her very
privates. But say, let's make a sport oft, would you mind? Else 'twere much
the same to win or lose."

"I've naught to wager," Ebenezer said, "nor should you wager if I had,
for the word I mean to speak hath not its like." Then he had a happier
thought: "Stay, how far yet is that ferry you spoke of?"

"Some five or six miles hence, I'd guess."

"Then let us wager the ride of our mounts, if you've a mind to. If you

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 405 ]

cannot rhyme the line I give you, you must walk from here to Cambridge
ferry; if you can, 'tis I shall walk. Done?"

"Well wagered/' Burlingame said merrily, "and I'll add more: who loses
must not merely walk, but walk behind old Roan there, that ever gets the
bumbreezes near midmoming. 'Twill add a spice to the winner's victory!"

"Done/' agreed the poet. "I had in sooth observed the mare was
flatulent."

Burlingame nodded. "'Tis her advanced years, I suppose: a certain
windiness of the arse doth e'er afflict an elder lady. E'en my Portia, who is
no shoat, hath cooled me on occasion."

"Enough," declared Ebenezer, "let us on with the trial. I shall muse you
a line, and you must rhyme it. Not a Hudibrastic, mind, but a perfect
match."

"Is't mosquito?" asked Burlingame. "I'll say incognito.97

"Nay," the Laureate smiled, "nor is it literature'9

"Twould be bitter-that's-sure," his tutor laughed.

"Nor misbehavior!9

"Thank the Savior!"

"Nor importunacy"

"That were lunacy!"

"Nor tiddlywinks."

"'Twould gain thee little, methiuks!"

"Nor galligaskin."
• "Was I askin'?"

"Nor charlatan:9

"Thin as tarlatan!"

"Nor Saracen"

"'Twould be embarrassin'!"

"Nor even autoschediastic,99

"Then it ought to be fantastic!"

"Nor catoptromancy"

"That's not so fancy!"

"Nor procnistean.99

"I should bust thee one!"

"Nor is it Piccadilly bombast99

"You'd be sick-o'-filly-bum-blastl"

"Nor Grandma's visit."

"Then, man, what is it?"

" Tis month,99 Ebenezer said.

[AO6] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Month?" cried Burlingame.

"Month" the Laureate repeated. "Rhyme me a word with month.
August is the Year's eighth Month"

"Month!" Burlingame said again. "Tis but a single syllable!"

"Many, then, 'twill be easy/' Ebenezer smiled. "August is the Year's
eighth Month"

"August is the Year's eighth Month" Burlingame began to show some
alarm as he searched his store of language.

"No lisping, now," Ebenezer warned. "Don't say Whoe'er denieth it ith
a Dunth, or Athent thee not, then count it oneth. That will not do."

Burlingame sighed. "And no Hudibrastics, you say?"

"Nay," Ebenezer confirmed. "You mayn't say August is the Year's eighth
Month, And not the tenth or milli-onth. Ben Oliver tried that once in
Locket's and was disqualified on the instant. I want a clear and natural
rhyme."

"Is there aught in the language?" Burlingame cried.

"Nay," the poet declared, "as I warned you ere you took the wager."

Burlingame searched his memory so thoroughly that perspiration beaded
his forehead, but after twenty minutes he was obliged to yield.

"I surrender, Eben; you have me pat." Most reluctantly, under his
prot6g6's triumphant smile, he dismounted, and taking his place behind
the aged roan, prepared to meet the odious consequences of his gamble.

"In the future, Henry," Ebenezer boldly advised, "hold not so grand an
estimate of your talents, and do not engage with poets in their own preserve.
If I may speak with candor, the gift of language is vouchsafed to but a few,
and though 'tis no great shame not to have't, 'twere folly to pretend to't
when you have it not."

And having delivered himself of this unusual rebuke, Ebenezer began
to hum a tune for very satisfaction. At the first slight elevation in the terrain
over which they traveled, the roan mare, already wearied, broke wind noisily
from the effort of climbing. Burlingame growled a mighty oath and cried
out in disgust, "What sort of poor vocabulary is't, that possesses nary noun
or verb to match the onth in August is the Year's eighth Month?"

"Do not rail against the language/' Ebenezer began, " 'tis really a most
admirable tongue . . ."

He halted, as did Burlingame and the roan. The two men regarded each
other warily.

"No matter," Ebenezer ventured. "The trial was done."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [4°?]

"Ah nay, Sir Laureate!" Burlingame laughed. "Mine is done, but thine
is but begun! Down with you, now!"

"But onth" Ebenezer protested— nevertheless dismounting. "Tis not
an English word, is't? What doth it signify?"

"Tut," said Burlingame, remounting his young gelding, "we set no such
criterion as significance, that I recall. To match the onth . . / is what I
said: onth is the object of match; objects of verbs are substantives; substan-
tives are words. Get thee behind yon roan!"

Ebenezer sighed, Burlingame laughed aloud, the roan mare once again
broke wind, and on went the travelers toward Cambridge, Burlingame
singing lustily:

"How wondrous a Vocabulary
Is't, that possesseth nary
Noun nor Verb the Rhyme for which'11
Stump the Son of Captain Mitchell!"

27: THE LAUREATE ASSERTS THAT JUSTICE IS BLIND,
AND ARMED WITH THIS PRINCIPLE, SETTLES A
LITIGATION

UPON THEIR ARRIVAL AT THE CHOPTANK RIVER FERRY, BURLINGAME DE-

clared Ebenezer's sentence served; he paid out a shilling apiece for their
fares and another shilling for the two horses', and the travelers took their
places in the sailing scow for the two-mile run to Cambridge.

Burlingame pointed across the channel to a few scattered buildings,
scarcely visible on the farther shore. "Yonder stands the seat of Dorset
County. When last your father saw it, 'twas naught but a planter's landing."

Weary from his ordeal, Ebenezer made no effort to conceal his disap-
pointment. "I knew 'twould be no English Cambridge, but I'll own I had
not thought 'twas rude as that. What is there in't to sing in epical verse?"

"Who knows what manner of sloven huts the real Troy was composed of,
or cares to know?" his friend replied. "'Tis the genius of the poet to
transcend his material; and it wants small eloquence to argue that the
meaner the subject, the greater must be the transcension,, to effect which
merits for the poet an honor commensurate with the difficulty of his
achievement."

[ 408 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

To this the Laureate clucked his tongue and said, "Methinks the Jesuit
hath the better of you, after all: you made a prisoner of his body, and he a
convert of your Reason."

Burlingame bristled at the jibe, for it was not the first Ebenezer had
directed at him that day. "It ill becomes you to defend the priest," he
scolded in a low voice, so that the ferryman could not hear. " Tis not the
Pope's cause we serve, but Baltimore's: the cause of Justice."

'True enough," the poet agreed, and added sagely: "Yet who's to say
which cause is Justice's? Justice is blind."

"But men are not; and as for Justice, her blindness is the blindness of
disinterest, not of innocence."

"That I deny," Ebenezer said blithely.

"Thou'rt grown entirely captious!"

"You are near forty, and I but twenty-eight," the Laureate declared, "and
in experience thou'rt at least three times my age; but despite my innocence
— nay, just because of t— I deem myself no less an authority than you on
matters of Justice, Truth, and Beauty."

"Outrageous!" cried his friend. "Why is't men pick the oldest and most
knowledgeable of their number to judge them, if not that worldliness is the
first ingredient of Justice?"

But Ebenezer stuck to his guns. " Tis but a vulgar error, like many an-
other."

Burlingame showed more irritation by the minute. "What is the differ-
ence 'twixt innocence and ignorance, pray, save that the one is Latin and
the other Greek? In substance they are the same: innocence is ignorance."

"By which you mean," Ebenezer retorted at once, "that innocence of
the world is ignorance oft; no man can quarrel with that. Yet the surest
thing about Justice, Truth, and Beauty is that they live not in the world,
but as transcendent entities, noumenal and pure. Tis everywhere remarked
how children oft perceive the truth at once,, where their elders have been
led astray by sophistication. What doth this evidence, if not that innocence
hath eyes to see what .experience cannot?"

"Fogh!" scoffed Burlingame. "That is mere Cambridge claptrap, such as
dear old Henry More did e'er espouse. Thank Heav'n such babes are help-
less in society—think how 'twould be to have one for your judge!"

"Haply Justice would live up to her motto for the first time ever," Ebene-
zer said, but his earlier glib assurance was now infused with petulance.

"That she would!" Henry laughed. "She could be pictured holding dice
in lieu of scales, for where blind Innocence is judge, the jury is blind

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [409]

Chance! I cannot decide/7 he added, "whether you maintain your inno-
cence because you hold such notions as this, or hold the notions to justify
your innocence/'

Ebenezer looked away and frowned as if at the approaching wharf, where
considerable activity seemed to be in progress. "Methinks 'twere fitter to
ask that of yourself, Henry: a man can cast away his innocence when he
list, but not his knowledge/'

On this ungenerous note the argument ended, for the ferry had reached
its destination. The travelers, mutually disgruntled^ stepped up to the
wharf, which was built at the juncture of Choptank River and a large creek,
and with some difficulty—for the tide was out—led their horses up a steep
gangplank after them.

Unprepossessing as it had been from afar, the town of Cambridge was
even less impressive at close range. There was, in fact, no town at all: a small
log structure visible farther inland Burlingame identified as the Dorchester
County Courthouse, which had been built only seven years before. Nearer
the river was a kind of inn or ordinary of even more recent construction,
and at the foot of the wharf itself was what appeared to be a relatively
large warehouse and general merchandise store combined — a building
which outdated both town and county as such, and which doubtless had
been known to Ebenezer's father as early as 1665. Other than these no
buildings could be seen, and there were, apparently, no private houses at
all.

Yet at least a score of people were strolling on the wharf and about the
warehouse; the sounds of general carouse rang down the roadway from the
tavern; and in addition to the numerous small craft moored here and there
along the shore, two larger, ocean-going vessels — a bark and a full-rigged
ship— lay out in the Choptank channel. The activity, so disproportionate
to the size and aspect of the town, Ebenezer learned was owing generally
to its role as seat of the county and* the convenience of its wharf and ware-
house to the surrounding plantations, and specifically to the fall term of
the court, currently in session, which provided a rare diversion for all and
sundry.

The roan mare and the gelding they tethered to a sapling near the creek,
and after a light dinner at the ordinary the travelers parted company, rather
to the Laureate's relief. Burlingame remained at the inn with the object of
hiring lodgings for the night, inquiring the whereabouts of William Smith,
and refreshing his thirst; and Ebenezer, left to himself, strolled idly up the
road toward the courthouse, preoccupied with his thoughts. Since the day

[ 410 I THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

was warm, the courthouse small, and litigation such a popular entertainment
among the colonials, the court was sitting out of doors, in a little valley just
adjacent to the building, in order that the greatest number of spectators
might observe the proceedings. Ebenezer found nearly a hundred of the
audience present already, though the court had not yet reconvened; they
were engaged in eating, drinking heartily, calling and waving to one an-
other across the natural amphitheater formed by the valley, wrestling play-
fully on the grass, singing rowdy songs, and otherwise amusing themselves
in a manner which the poet deemed scarcely befitting the dignity of a
courtroom. Notes for tobacco were everywhere being exchanged, and
Ebenezer soon realized that virtually all the men were making wagers on
the outcome of the trials. The fact astonished him and even stirred vague
forebodings in his mind, but he took a seat along the top of the amphi-
theater nevertheless to witness the session; his interest was aroused by his
recent debate with Burlingame, for one thing, and he hoped as well to
spawn couplets on the majesty of Maryland's law, as had been suggested
by

"'Sdeath!" he thought, and winced and sighed: he could not manage
to remember that it was Burlingame, not Charles Calvert, who had issued
his commission; it was a thought too great and painful in its implications
to hold fast in his awareness.

After some minutes the crier appeared from the courthouse door and
bawled "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" but advanced no farther than the first hedge-
row before a rain of cheerfully-flung twigs and pebbles drove him back.
Then entered the judge, sans wig and robe of office, whom Ebenezer
recognized only because, after pausing to chat with several of the audience
and nod his head at their exchanges of tobacco-notes, he took his place
upon the open-air bench. Next came the jury (Ebenezer approved, uncer-
tainly, their apparent practice of wagering only among themselves) and
finally the attorneys for prosecution and defense, sharing a single tall flagon
with the judge. The only principals not present were the plaintiff and the
defendant, and as Ebenezer scanned the crowd, conjecturing as to their
identities, his eye fell on Susan Warren herself, sitting near the front row
with an elderly man whom the poet had never seen before! She had, it
appeared, cleaned herself up to some extent, but where before her face had
been dirty and her brown hair matted, now she was rouged and powdered
to excess, and her hair was done up in the manner of a tart. She had ex-
changed her tattered Scotch cloth for sleazy satinesco, gaudily printed and
open at the bosom, and her manner was in keeping with her dress: her

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

laugh was loud and easily provoked; her eyes roved appraisingly from one
man to another the whole while she talked to her escort; and she empha-
sized her statements with a hand laid lightly now on her partner's arm,
now on his shoulder, now on his knee.

Ebenezer watched her for some time with feelings as various as they
were strong: his professions to Burlingame to the contrary notwithstanding,
he was piqued as well as grateful that she'd jilted him in Captain Mitchell's
barn; he yearned to know what had changed her mind, whether she had
rejoined her father (and if so, why she was persisting in this harlotry), and —
perhaps most urgently— whether she had news of Joan Toast, and why her
story had not corresponded quite with Burlingame's. Moreover, despite his
disgust at her brazen appearance and his concern for Joan Toast, he felt
unmistakable pangs of jealousy at the sight of Susan's escort— who, however,
was virtually ignoring her coquetries. Ebenezer debated with himself
whether to catch her eye and attempt to converse with her— among
other things, he did not wholly trust Burlingame's pledge not to apprehend
her— but at length he decided not to.

"I am well quit of her," he declared to himself. "As my advances to her
plague my conscience, may her desertion of me plague hers. The just thing's
to meddle farther neither in her flight nor in her capture, and there's an
end on't ."

So engrossing to the Laureate were these reflections, he scarcely remarked
that the court was now in session and the dispute waxing hot, until the
spectators' shouts drew his attention to the bar. In progress was a change-
of-venue case from Kent County, and the testimony, evidently, was going
hard against the plaintiff, on whose victory a substantial amount of Dor-
chester's money must have been riding; the audience was shouting down
the attorney for the defendants, a married couple of middle age.

"Be't said again," the lawyer was declaiming, "that the accused, my client
Mr. Bradnox— himself a bona fide justice o' the peace, was on the eve in
question sitting justly and peaceably at home with Mistress Mary Bradnox
his wife, when the plaintiff, Mr. Salter, did appear at his door with rum
and playing-cards and did invite the two defendants to make merry. Twas
then near midnight, and Mrs. Bradnox soon after bade the men good night
and retired to her- chamber "

" Twas the chamber-pot she run to!" bawled the plaintiff from across
the yard, and the audience cried assent. The defense counsel held a
whispered colloquy with his client.

"I hereby amend my statement on advisement from Mrs. Bradnox that

[412] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

she did in sooth heed nature's call, but went straight from pot to cot, as't
were."

"A lie!" the plaintiff cried again. He was a dark, lean fellow in his forties,
uncommonly tall and leathery, and had a small jug at his side from which
he drank. "When I went upstairs anon to try her, I found her cross-legged
in the window seat with a song upon her lips and my good liquor in her
bowels, a-firing farts at the waning moon/'

"As the plaintiff Mr. Salter hath confessed," the defense lawyer went on
slyly, "he did later leave the festivities, having got my client fuddled, and
did climb the stairs to Mrs. Bradnox's chamber, whereto he did force entry
and assault my client in dastard fashion— the truth oft is, he swived Mistress
Mary from arse to Michaelmas and did thereby cuckold her spouse the
Justice!"

"Hear!" cried the spectators.

"Having finished which evil work," the defense continued, "this Salter
did return to the parlor, where he ill employed his host's beliquorment to
cheat him at a game o' lanterloo, to the tune of several hundred pounds of
tobacco, plying him the while with yet more rum to hide the fraud. Whenas
my pitiful client grew so light with his load o' drams that he tumbled to the
floor, by which fall his nose did bleed much, this same John Salter did spit
upon him, make water on him, and otherwise offend the laws of hospitality,
telling him finally that he was not two hours a horned cuckold—he Salter
having laid sack-a-sack, rem in rem with Mistress Mary and tried her with
much .relish from navel to counterpane. Hearing which, my client did on
the instant go wondrous sober and, calling this same Salter blasphemer and
turdy scoundrel, did ascend unto his wife's chamber in a fearful choler.
Entering therein, he did commence to chastise her for a whore and scurvy
peddletwat, as well as divers other epithets of castigation and admonition,
and anon did grab her by the birth and drag her thus from bed to floor in
an inhumane manner."

"Shame!" bawled the crowd, and, "To the post with him!" Ebenezer too
was shocked, but not nearly so much by this revelation as by the entire
preceding narrative of the plaintiffs behavior, the like of which, for sheer
brazenness, he had never heard. He wondered, in fact, how it was that
Salter was the plaintiff and not the accused in the litigation, particularly in
the light of the defendant's position as Justice of the Peace.
^ "In the course of which domestic altercation," the defense proceeded,
"the plaintiff Mr. Salter entered, and intruding himself betwixt the man
and wife my clients, did take the part of Mistress Mary against her wedded

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

spouse, clutching same about the neck and choking him till the Justice's
eyes did lose their spark and stared all emptily like pissholes in the
snow . . ."

"Hear!"

"Whereupon said Justice Bradnox did leave off his grip upon Mistress
Mary's privates and confronted Salter with the latter's peccadilloes, con-
tending that, by virtue of his having swived Mary ruthlessly from pot to
pallet, said Salter did forfeit any and all claim to the Justice's esteem and
was in fact no proper guest but a gigolo and shitabed hypocrite. To which
description the plaintiff did reply by blacking both the Justice's eyes and
raising a duck-egg knot upon his pate, declaring the while that Justice
Bradnox was deficient in manly virtue "

"I told him he was manly as a steer," Salter specified, wiping the mouth
of the wine-jug with his sleeve, "and useful as a whore in church.'7

"That was well said," remarked a man sitting next to Ebenezer.

"And he did farther declare," the defense went on, "that Mistress Mary
was not worth the trouble to hoist her coats . . "

"'Twas like making love to Aldersgate, I swear," Salter complained.

'Whereto the Justice did reply that, should Salter not close his leprous
claptrap, he the Justice my client would close it for him, and shoot him,
knock him upon the head, and break his two legs into the bargain. To
which the plaintiff rejoined "

"Enough!" cried the judge, whom Ebenezer applauded for putting an
end to the lurid narrative. But then he added, "Thy drivel will have us
snoring in a minute. What's the charge, for heaven's sake?"

Salter leaped to his feet at once. "The charge," he said, 4tis that this
blackguard Bradnox never paid me for that liquor— a rundlet in all, give or
take a dram — and farther, that whilst I was a-swiving Mary Bradnox from
sprit to spanker, certain coins did fall from out my breeches, that were upon
a chair, and these same coins the rascals ne'er returned to me."

"Mother of God!" the Laureate whispered.

"What say ye,, jurymen?" charged the judge. "Is the defendant guilty, or
will ye let the scoundrel go?"

The most Ebenezer could hope for during the minute or so of the jury's
deliberation was that the notes being exchanged among them were mes-
sages and not tobacco-notes; he was too appalled by the conduct of the
court to expect an honest judgment. It came, in fact, as something of a
shock to him when the foreman of the jury said, "Your Honor, we find
the defendant not guilty."

[414] TEE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Not guilty!" roared the judge, and his protest was echoed by the audi-
ence. "Sheriff, arrest those twelve rascals and charge 'em all with contempt
o' court! Not guilty! Marry, the man's soul is black as the Ace o' Spades,
and that of his short-heeled wife little whiter! Good God, men, will ye
bring fair Dorset to wrack and ruin? Nay, I say: the defendant is guilty as
charged!"

Ebenezer rose indignantly to his feet, but his objections were swallowed
up by the crowd's tumultuous applause.

"The Court here orders that Tom Bradnox pay o'er to Salter the full
price of his rundlet and deliver a like amount to the Court come sunrise
next, or stand pilloried till this Court adjourns. Farther, that Mary Bradnox
return to the plaintiff double the value of the coins he lost while swiving
her from bosom to birthright, or else suffer herself the letter T to be burnt
in her hand, for thievery. Next case!"

The spectators whistled and guffawed, slapped one another's shoulders,
pinched one another's wives, and collected or settled their wagers. Ebenezer
remained on his feet, so astonished by the conduct of the court that his face
was white, and searched for the most scathing terms in his vocabulary, for
he meant to deliver then and there a public rebuke not only to the plaintiff
and the judge, who had been clearly in collusion, but to the audience as
well, for their undignified behavior. The degree xrf his indignation (particu-
larly after the argument with Burlingame) and the loftiness of his position
removed what qualms he might have had about taking such a bold step,
but before he could compose his reprimand the next litigants had taken
the stand, and his attention was distracted by the fact that one of them—
apparently the defendant— was Susan Warren's escort, with whom the
judge appeared to be on familiar terms.

"What is't ye want here, Ben Spurdance?" asked the judge, and Ebene-
zer gave a start— the name he seemed to have heard before, doubtless from
Susan, but he could not recall in what connection.

"Ye'd better ask fcfm," Spurdance grumbled, pointing to a hale old man
in the plaintiffs seat.

"Who might you be?" the judge demanded of him.

The old man answered, "William Smith, your Honor." Ebenezer started
once again: was this the William Smith whom Burlingame sought?

"What is your lying complaint against old Ben Spurdance?" asked the
fudge, and at this second mention of the name Ebenezer remembered
where he'd heard it before: Captain Mitchell, as they left, had instructed

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

his "son" to search for Susan Warren at the home of one Ben Spurdance^
which he had called "a den of thieves and whores."

But he was due for yet a further surprise, for in answer to the Court's
question Smith replied that upon his arrival in the Province some four years
ago he had of necessity indentured himself to the defendant, having spent
all his money en route for medicines to aid his ailing daughter, and that the
term of his indenture had just recently expired.

"'Dslife!" the Laureate marveled. "Tis not our man at all, but Susan
" Warren's poor sainted father that she told me of!" And he wondered angrily
why Susan had been consorting with the defendant. William Smith, in the
meantime, proceeded to articulate his grievance: he had, he declared,
served Spurdance faithfully for the four years of his indenture in the position
of cooper and smith, but upon the expiration of his service Spurdance had
reneged on the terms of their agreement. Specifically, Spurdance had given
over to him only an acre and a half of land— and poor land at that, full of
stones and gullies— instead of the twenty called for by the indenture, and
had told him he could go hang for all the more he'd get.

"Poor wretch!" Ebenezer commiserated to himself. "E'en yet his Chris-
tian nature is exploited!" He was all the more ready now to deliver his
harangue, but he thought it best to wait until he had the whole sorry tale
of Smith's misfortunes.

The defendant then testified that while the plaintiffs speech was sub-
stantially correct, he Spurdance had not told Smith to go hang for all the
rest he'd get.

"I told the old goat to thrust his acres up his arse and leave me in peace,"
he declared.

"I'God, he e'en admits his guilt!" thought Ebenezer.

The judge frowned uncordially at the plaintiff. "Are ye trying to lie to
the Court, sir?"

"Haply 'twas as he says," admitted Smith, "albeit my memory is he said
'Go hang, for all the more ye'll get!' "

"Well, which was't?" the judge demanded.

" 'Twas Thrust it" Spurdance insisted.

" Twas Go hang" Smith maintained.

"Thrust it!" shouted Spurdance.

"Go hang!" cried Smith.

"Thrust it," the judge ordered, rapping for silence. "Your friend here
hath a slippery lawyer, Ben," he said to the defendant. "Where's yours?"

Spurdance sniffed in the direction of the prosecuting attorney, a plump

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

little man in a black suit such as Quakers often wore. "I need no liars
like Richard Sowter to defend me."

"Call your first witness, then, and let's get on with't."

No one except Ebenezer seemed to see anything unorthodox about hear-
ing the defense before the prosecution, and when he saw Susan Warren
take the stand in Spurdance's behalf, his wonder was replaced by sheer aston-
ishment. In such a court as this, he began to think, nothing was disallowed
but Justice; only an honest verdict would be surprising.

Susan's testimony, however, surpassed for incredibility anything else he*
had heard said that afternoon. She had fled to Maryland, she declared,
under the protection of one kindly Captain Mitchell of Calvert County,
in order to escape the incestuous demands of a father who lusted after
her like a billy-goat! "He did then privily pursue me aboard the ship it-
self," she went on, "and squandered all his money to bribe Captain Mitch-
ell. Twas his object to make the Captain play the pander and deliver
me into his evil hands, that he might ravish me from foYsle to poop deck!"

The spectators, though they had greeted Susan's accession to the stand
with whistles and lewd remarks, were now in obvious sympathy with her
plight; they murmured their approval of the testimony that her father's
efforts to corrupt her guardian had been in vain, and that as a consequence
he had been obliged to indenture himself to Spurdance.

"Good Ben here took him only as a favor to me," she declared, "and
'twas an ill bargain I bade him strike, for my father scorned his end oft.
He proved an idler and a rabble rouser, e'en as I'd feared; Mr. Spurdance
gave him the acre and a half out of pure Christian charity, for he owed
him not a ship fitter's fart. He is my father, worse luck for me, but 'twould
give me joy to see the rascal put to the post, I swear, and have the nastiness
flogged from his wretched bones!"

The judge commended Susan warmly and with no further ado dismissed
the untrustworthy jury and declared himself ready to find the plaintiff guilty
of lying and idleness; but before he could render an official verdict, Eben-
ezer, who had sprung to his feet and trembled with rage through the latter
part of Susan's testimony, now raised himself to h'is full height on the
grassy bank and cried, "Stopl I demand that this outrageous proceeding
be stopped!"

Susan gasped and turned away; the crowd hooted and threw twigs, but
the judge brayed louder and banged his gavel.

"Order! Order, damn ye! Now who in the name of Antichrist are you,
and why are ye obstructing the justice of this court?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

As he turned to dodge a twig, Ebenezer saw Henry Burlingame hurrying
toward him around the top edge of the amphitheater and signaling urgently
for him to hold his peace. But the Laureate's indignation was not so lightly
held in check; in fact, the pertinence of the present situation to what
he and Burlingame had been arguing not long before made Ebenezer
even more eager to speak out when he saw his former tutor among the
audience.

"I am Ebenezer Cooke,, Your Honor, Poet and Laureate of this entire
province by grace of Charles, Lord Baltimore, and I strenuously object to
the verdict just proposed, as being a travesty of Justice and a smirch on
the fair escutcheon of Maryland law!"

"Hear!" cried some of the audience, but others shouted "Turn the Papist
out!" As soon as the declaration was made, Ebenezer saw Burlingame halt
in full career, clap a hand to his brow, and then with a shrug sit down
where he happened to have stopped.

"Oh la," scoffed the judge, "'tweren't that bad." He winked broadly at
the assemblage. " 'Twas the best verdict old Ben Spurdance could afford."

Burlingame's alarm had taken its toll on the Laureate's self-confidence,
but it was too late now for him to retreat; uncertainty put new wrath into
his voice.

"You know not whom you twit, sir! Poltroons greater and blacker than
you have felt the sting of Hudibrastic and been brought low! Now will
you render Justice to yon poor wretch the plaintiff, whose inequitable
case cries out to Heav'n for remedy, and cause the defendant and that
perfidious slattern of a witness to suffer for their calumnies? Or will you
bring upon yourself the Laureate's wrath, and with it the wrath of an out-
raged populace?"

Spurdance, meanwhile, had turned pale, and as the crowd murmured
to one another, he went to the bench to whisper in the judge's ear during
this last challenge.

"I care not a tinker's turd who he is!" the judge swore to Spurdance.
"This is my court, and I mean to run it honestly: nobody gets a verdict
he hath not paid for!"

"So be't!" the poet shouted over the laughter of the crowd. "If Justice
in this province belongs for the nonce to the man that buys her, then in
this instance I shall pay the harlot's fee." He glared meaningfully at Susan.
"Whate'er this evil Spurdance bribed you I shall raise by half, for the privi-
lege of rendering both verdict and sentence."

"Two hundred pounds o' sot-weed," said the judge.

[ 418 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Three hundred, then/' the Laureate replied.

"I object!" cried Spurdance, greatly alarmed.

"And I!" chimed Susan, whose look of terror brought a proud smile
to the poet's lips. William Smith stood up as if to add a third objection,
but his little black-suited counsel quickly stopped him and whispered in his
ear.

"Objections overruled," snapped the judge. "The case is in your hands,
Master Poet. But bear in mind 'tis not allowed to take life or member/'

The defendant and Susan showed surprise and consternation over the
progress of events, as did Burlingame, who sprang up at the judge's ruling
and once again hurried towards Ebenezer. But he was still several hundred
feet away, and the Laureate proceeded undisturbed.

"I wish neither," he declared, "only Justice. Spurdance, it appears, did
no bodily injury to the plaintiff; therefore none shall be done to him, Twas
a matter of land-payment, and I shall administer Justice of the nature of
the crime. What a devilish thing it is, for a wealthy man to rob a poor!
'Twere only fit, in such unequal contest, that after a time the two roles
be reversed. My verdict is that the defendant stands guilty as charged, and
rny sentence is that the plaintiff be awarded in damages not alone the
twenty acres originally due him, but all the property from which the grant
was made, saving only the acre and a half now held by the plaintiff.
In other words, the defendant shall own the pittance he so grudged to
give up, and the plaintiff shall own the hoard from which it came! As for
Miss Susan Warren, since it seems by no means uncommon in this court
to sentence persons not on trial, I find her guilty of fraud, calumny, de-
famation, lewdness, whoredom, and filial disaffection, and here decree that
she must remain in the custody of her father the plaintiff whilst an en-
quiry be made into the legality of her indenture to Captain Mitchell.
Farther, that at the soonest opportunity her father is to arrange a fit match
for her, that under the connubial yoke she might instruct herself in the
ways of virtue and piety. These strictures, penalties, and decrees to be ex-
ecuted within the fortnight on pain of increased sentence and imprison-
ment!"

From across tjie courtyard came a mocking, almost hysterical laugh, and
Burlingame, Spurdance, and Susan Warren all cried out at once, but the
judge said, "The Court so rules," and banged the table with his gavel.
"And I shall add, sir, that in all my years upon the bench I have ne'er wit-
nessed such a foolish generosity!"
Ebenezer bowed. "I thank you. Yet 'twere better the Justice of the sen-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 4X9 1

tence be praised, and not its magnanimity. Tis a light matter to be gen-
erous with another man's property/'

The judge made some reply, but it was lost in the uproar of the crowd,
who now lifted Ebenezer upon their shoulders and bore him off to the
tavern down the street.

" Tis not I you should honor, but blind Justice/' the poet said to no
one in particular. "Howbeit," he added, "'tis gratifying to find myself
at last among folk not purblind to the dignity of my office. My esteem for
Cambridge hath been restored entire."

Indeed there was some murmur of saintliness among the more impres-
sionable of the crowd; one mother held up her infant child for him to kiss,
but the Laureate modestly waved the lady away. He glanced about in vain
for Burlingame, to savor his reaction to this triumph.

The erstwhile plaintiff William Smith was already at the inn when they
arrived, and at sight of his benefactor he ordered ale for everyone.

"How can I thank ye, sir?" he cried, embracing Ebenezer. "Thou'rt the
Christianest soul in the Province o' Maryland, I swear!"

"Tut, now," the Laureate replied. "I only hope they will not cheat you
oft yet."

" Tis what I fear as well, sir," Smith agreed, and drew a paper from
his shirt. "My lawyer hath just now drawn up this paper, which if you'll
sign, will seal your sentence fast in any court."

"Then let's have done with't, and to the ale," laughed Ebenezer. He
took quill and ink from the barman, signed the document with a flourish,
and returned it to Smith, wishing Burlingame^ Anna, , and his London
friends were present to witness this most glorious hour of his life.

"Now," declared Smith, raising his bumper of ale in toast: "To Master
Cooke, sirs, our Laureate Poet, that is the grandest gentleman e'er graced
Dorset County!"

"Hear!" cried the others.

"And to Mr. Smith," -Ebenezer rejoined politely, "that hath no more
than just reward for all his trials."

"Hear!"

"Here's to that painted puss his daughter," someone shouted from the
mob. "May Heav'n preserve us from her "

"Nay, rather to Justice," the Laureate broke in, embarrassed by the ref-
erence to Susan. "To Justice, Poetry, Maryland— and, if you will, to Maiden,
whither I am bound."

"Aye, to Maiden," Smith affirmed. "And ye must know, sir, once I've

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"sacked that rascal Spurdance for a proper overseer, thou'rt ever welcome
there to visit when ye will and be my honored guest however long ye
choose." He laughed and winked his eye. "I'faith, sir, should Lord Calvert's
false commission pay no wage, I'll hire yourself in Spurdance's stead to
manage Maiden. Ye could be no worse a one than he, that cheated ye
blind without your knowing aught oft."

Ebenezer frowned in horror. "Dear sir, I do not follow you for a mo-
ment!"

"Ah well, 'tis no matter now, lad." Smith grinned and took a fresh
glass from the barman. "Many a truth is spoke in ignorance, and many a
wrong set right by chance. To Maiden!" he said to the crowd, and clearly
for the Laureate's benefit went on: "Now 'tis mine in title, I shall run it as
Ben Spurdance never durst!"

"Hear! Hear! Hear!" they all cried, and quaffed so deeply of ale and
enthusiasm that few saw the guest of honor swoon dead away upon the
sawdust floor.

28: IF THE LAUREATE IS ADAM, THEN BURLINGAME
IS THE SERPENT

WHEN HE RECOVERED HIS SENSES EBENEZER FOUND HIMSELF ON A BENCH

in one corner of the tavern; his feet were elevated on a wooden box, and
a cold wet cloth had been placed across his brow. Remembering why he'd
fainted nearly carried him off afresh; he closed his eyes again, and wished
he could perish on the instant where he lay rather than face the derision
of the crowd and his own shame at the folly of his loss. When at length
he dared to look about him, he saw Henry Burlingame sitting alone at the
nearest table, smoking a pipe and regarding the carousers at the bat.

"Henry!" the stricken poet called.

Burlingame spun around at once. "Not Henry, Eben— Tim Mitchell is
my name. I found you laid out on the floor."

"Twas my first swoon." Ebenezer sat up and shook his head. "Ah, dear
Christ, Henry, what have I done? And in the face of all your warnings!"

Burlingame smiled. "Tou've administered innocent Justice, I should say."

"Nay, twit me not, in the name of Heaven!" He buried his face in his
hands. "Would God I'd stayed in London!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 421 ]

"Did old Andrew grant you power of attorney? If not, you had no right
to make the gift/'

"He never should have," Ebenezer answered, "but he did. I have signed
away his estate, and my whole legacy, to that thieving cooper!"

Burlingame sucked on his pipe. " 'Twas a fool's conveyance, but what's
done is done. How doth it feel, to be a pauper like myself?"

Ebenezer could not reply at once. Tears came to his eyes, and he hung
his head. " Twas Anna's dowry too, the half of it: I shall make over to her
my share of the house in Plumtree Street, and beg her pardon. But whatever
will Father say?"

"Stay, now," said Burlingame, "don't preach the funeral ere the patient
is quite dead. What do we know of this William Smith? He made his exit
when you fell a-swoon."

"He is a scoundrel, else he'd not have taken such advantage of my
innocence."

"That only proves him human, as you shall learn. D'you think he is
the William Smith we came for?"

"How could he be, a simple cooper? I had his history from Susan Warren
back at Mitchell's."

But Burlingame frowned. "There is more to him than that, and her as
well, but God knows what; one schemer hath an eye for others. Twould
not at all surprise me to learn he is our man, a secret agent of Lord
Baltimore's."

"What boots it if he's Governor of the Province?" Ebenezer asked
gloomily. "Maiden is his in any case."

"Haply so, haply so. Or haply when he leams our mission he will be
more reasonable."

Ebenezer brightened at once. "FGod, Henry, do you believe it?"

Burlingame shrugged. "No behavior is impossible in the world. Leave
things to trie, and I shall learn whate'er I can. You'd best assume thou'rt
penniless for the nonce, as well you may be, and say nothing of our hope.
Drown your loss in liquor like the lot of men."

By this time the Laureate's resuscitation had been observed by the other
patrons of the inn, who so far from deriding him, invited him to drink at
their expense.

"Don't they know yet of my loss?" he asked Burlingame.

"Aye, they know. Some knew it from the first, and only later learned
'twas not intended." .

"What a ninny they must think me!"

[ 422 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Again Burlingame shrugged. "Less of a saint and more of a man. You'd
as well oblige 'em, don't you think?"

Ebenezer started up from the bench, but sank back again in despair.
"Nay, great God, how can I stand about and drink when I have thrown
away my Maiden? Tis the pistol I should turn to, not the ale-glass!"

"There is a lesson in your loss," his friend replied, "but 'tis not for me
to teach it." He got up from his chair. "Well, now thou'rt landless like my-
self, will you get drunk as I intend to?"

Still the poet hesitated. "I fear liquor as I fear fevers, drugs, and dreams,
that change a man's perspective. A man should see the world as it is, for
good or ill."

'That is a boon you've ne'er been vouchsafed yet, my friend. Why hope
for't tonight?"

"Unkind!" protested Ebenezer. "'Tis only that I've ne'er been drunk
before."

"Nor ever a placeless pauper," Henry retorted. "But do as you list." He
turned his back on Ebenezer and went alone to the bar, where he was
welcomed familiarly as Tim Mitchell by the other patrons. And Ebenezer,
whose objections had been more cautionary than heartfelt, soon joined him
—not alone because his loss was too staggering to look at squarely, but also
because he did not feel altogether well. Whether owing to the flatulence
of the roan, his alarm at Henry's ill treatment of Father Smith, or—
what seemed most likely to him— that same period of "seasoning," endured
by all new arrivals to the colonies, to which his mother had succumbed,
his stomach had been uneasy since the morning, and his brow a trifle fever-
ish since noon. It was relief from this incipient malaise, as well as from
the misery of his circumstances, that he looked for in the liquor.

"Hi, now!" a planter cried at his approach. "Here comes our Christlike
Laureate at last!" There was no malice in his tone at all; his greeting was
echoed by the others, who made room for him and went so far as to swear
to the barman that they would leave in a body if their new comrade were
not given free rum at once.

Their cordiality moistened the poet's eyes. "'Tis not a proper Laureate
you see before you, friends," he began, speaking with some difficulty. "Nay,
rather it is the very prince of fools, and yet thou'rt civil to him as to a
man of sense. I shan't forget it."

Burlingame looked up with interest at the outset of this speech, but
seemed disappointed by its close.

"One folly doth not make a fool," someone replied.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Twas a princely stupid grant," another declared, "and you've a
princely misery in exchange for't. Methinks thou'rt quits/'

Ebenezer drank off his rum and was given another. "A fortune poorer
and a groatsworth wiser?" He shook his head. "I see no bargain in't."

"That is the way oft, nonetheless," said Burlingame, in the accents of
Timothy Mitchell. "'Unless a man matriculate betimes, Life's college hath
a dear tuition. Besides, thou'rt in a venerable position."

"Venerable!" protested the Laureate. "If you mean I'm not the world's
initial ass, then I agree, but I see naught in that to venerate!"

"Drink up, and I'll explain." His tutor smiled and, when Ebenezer com-
plied, he said, "What is your lot, if not the lot of man?"

"Haply 'tis the rum beclouds me," Ebenezer interrupted, "for I see nor
sense nor rhyme in that remark." He terminated his statement with a belch,
to his new-found friends' amusement, and called for another drink.

"I mean 'tis Adam's story thou'rt re-enacting." Henry went on. "Ye set
great store upon your innocence, and by reason oft have lost your earthly
paradise. Nay, I shall take the conceit e'en farther: not only hath your
adventure left ye homeless, but like Adam ye've your first bellyful of knowl-
edge and experience; ye'll pluck easy fruit no more to line your gut with,
but earn your bread with guilty sweat, as do the mass of men. Your father,
if I know him, will not lose this chance to play the wrathful God and turn
ye out o' the Garden!"

Ebenezer laughed as readily as the others at this analogy, if not so
heartily, and mug in hand replied, "Such conceits as that are spirited
horses, that if not rid with art will take their riders far afield."

"Ye do not like it?"

"The fault is not in the Hi, there!" In gesturing his dissent Ebenezer

had splashed a deal of rum on his shirt. "What waste of brew, sirs! Prithee
fill me up. There's a Christian Dorsetman!" This time he drank off half a
glass before he spoke. "What was I saying, now, good friends?" He frowned
at his dripping garment. "From the way the water broke, I judge some
mighty thought was in travail: another Errare hurnanum est, for aught
you know, or Fiat justitia mat caelum"

"It had to do with horses," said one of the delighted patrons.

'With horses!"

"Aye," another laughed, "ye were in argument with Tim Mitchell here."

"Pray God the jade is windless, then," Ebenezer said. "I am sick to
death of horsefart from our last contest of wit!"

Though none but Burlingame really understood this remark, it was re-

TSE' SOT-WEED FACTOR

ceived with great hilarity by the planters, who now vied with one another
to buy the Laureate drinks.

"Twas Master Tim's conceit ye took to task," one said.

"Indeed? Then let him look to't, for just as Many can pack the cards
that cannot play, so many can turn a rhyme that are not poets. Good rhymes
are mere embroidery on the muse's drawers, but metaphor's their very warp
and woof— if I may say so."

"Ye never would have ere this night," said Burlingame, who seemed
not amused.

"I have't now!" Ebenezer cried; the company smiled and urged him to
drink dry his glass before he spoke.

" Twas all that likening me to Adam I took issue with." He wiped his
mouth on his sleeve and leaned his elbow in a puddle on the bar. "Me-
thinks friend Timothy hath forgot old Adam was a sinner, and that his
Original Sin was knowledge and experience. Ere he took his sinful bite
he was immortal as the beasts, that learn little from experience and know
not death; once glutted with the fruit of Learning's orchard, 'twas his pun-
ishment to groan with the heartburn of despair, and to grope his little way
in the black foreshadow of his death."

Burlingame shrugged. " 'Twas what I "

"Stay," the Laureate commanded, "I am not done!" For all Burlingame
had urged Ebenezer to drink, he was plainly annoyed by his prot6g6's
alcoholic eloquence; he turned away to his own glass, and the patrons
nudged each other with apprehensive mirth, for their guest of honor seemed
bent on baiting him.

"What you forgot in your o'erhasty trope," Ebenezer declared: "was just
the sort of apple Father Adam bit. What knowledge is it, Timmy, that is
root and stem of all? What vile experience sows the seeds of death in men?
I'faith, how did it slip your mind, that are so big with seed yourself and
have broadcast in the furrows of two hemispheres? 'Twas carnal knowledge,
Tim boy, experience of the flesh, that caused man's fall! If I am Adam,
I am Eveless, and Adam Eveless is immortal and unfallen. In fine, sir, my
estate is lost, but I am not, and there's an end on't!"

"Your tongue runs over," Burlingame grumbled.

"Behold him, citizens of Dorset!" the poet cried, and pointed more or
less at Burlingame with one hand while he tipped back his rum-glass with
the other. "Ecce signum! Finem re&pice! If knowledge be sin and death,
as Scripture says, there stands a Faustus of the flesh— a very Lucifer!"

"Nay, poet, ye go too far," a planter cautioned. "This is no feckless Quaker

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 425 ]

thou'rt abusing." Several others echoed his discomfort; some even moved
discreetly from the bar to nearby tables, where they could watch without
being mistaken for participants.

Whether aware of the change in their attitude or not, Ebenezer went
on undaunted. "This man you see here is more knowledgeable than, a squad
of Oxford dons, and more versed in carnal lore than Aretino! Beside him
old Cartesius is a numbskull, Wallenstein a guileless babe, and Rabelais
but a mincing Puritan. Behold his cheeks, that wear the ashy hue of Chaos!
Behold his brow, deep-furrowed by the history of the race!"

"I prithee stay!" someone entreated him.

"Behold his eyes, sirs, that have read of every unholy deed e'er dreamt
of by the tortuous mind of man, and looked on these same deeds done
in the flesh! Oh, in particular behold those eyes, so full of death! Turn
round here, Henry— Timothy, I mean!— turn round for us, Timmy, and
chill us with those eyes! They are cold and ancient as a reptile's, friends
—in sooth, in sooth, they are the eyes of Eden's serpent, that, nested in
the Tree of Knowledge, enthralled the earth's first woman with his winkless
stare!"

''Curb thy drunken tongue," warned Burlingame. "Thou'rt prating non-
sense!"

But Ebenezer was too far gone in rum and wrath to leave off his tirade.
"Oh Lord, good sirs, behold those eyes! How many maids hath that stare
rendered helpless, that soon were maids no morel What a deal of innocence
have those two hands corrupted!"

"This is Tim Mitchell ye speak tol" a frightened planter said. "How
is't ye dare abuse him so?"

"How is't I dare?" the poet repeated. His gaze. never left Burlingame,
whose face betrayed increasing irritation. He set down his glass, and his
eyes filled with tears. "Because he hath with his infamous guile bewitched
one innocent flower, most precious to my heart of all, a very paragon of
gentle chastity, and sought by every foul means to possess her!"

"Stop!" Burlingame commanded.

" 'Tis for this alone he feigns to be my friend and makes game of my
innocence but takes no umbrage at my abuse: he still pursues his evil end.
Yet I am proud to say his craft thus far hath borne no fruit: this flower's
virtue is of hardy stock, and hath not yet succumbed to his vile blandish-
ment. Lookee, how the truth doth gall him! This embodiment of cosmic
lust— how doth it fret him to see that flower go still unpluckedl"

[426] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Burlingame sighed and turned grimly to the company. "Since it is your
pleasure to noise these privy matters in a public house, young man, and
boast so of my talents to these gentlemen, I must insist ye tell the whole,
unvarnished truth about this flower/'

"And what is that?" the Laureate asked, but with some apprehension
in his sneer. "You will never know her one tenth as well as I do."

"Of that I have no doubt, Master Laureate; yet to hear ye speak of her,
these gentlemen must think your flower as thorny as the brier rose, or
difficult of access as the lofty edelweiss. Yet ten years and more ago, whilst
still a bud, she came to me for plucking and bade me be the first to taste
her nectar. These eyes of mine, that ye make much of: how often she
hath unfolded all her petals for their delight! And with these hands and
this mouth, to say no farther, many and many a time I have brought her
to the brink of madness— aye, and made her swoon for joy! A little growth
or mole she hath— ye know her so well, I need not mention where-— which
if ye press it such-a-way "

Ebenezer had gone white; his features roiled and boiled about. "Stop!"
he gasped.

"And her most modest countenance— ye must know even more than I
what sweet perversions it conceals! That little language that she speaks
without her mouth, and her endless tricks to conjure manliness "

The company laughed and rolled their eyes at one another. Ebenezer
clutched his throat, unable to speak, and buried his face in his arms upon
the bar. Though he had stopped drinking, the alcohol still mounted to his
head. His palms and forehead sweated, saliva poured into his mouth, and
his stomach churned.

"I scarce need mention that most fetching game of all," Burlingame
went on relentlessly, "the one she plays when other pleasures fail— have
ye remarked it? I mean the game she calls Heavenly Twins, or Abel and
Jumella, but I call Riding to Gomorrah—"

"Wretch!" shrieked Ebenezer, and endeavored to fling himself upon his
former tutor; but he was held fast by the planters and counseled to keep
his wrath in check. His vision swam: his equilibrium left him, and he fell
into a fit of retching at the image of what he'd heard. As though from
another room he heard Burlingame say, " Tis time to fill the pipes. Take
him somewhere to sleep his liquor out, and mind ye treat him well, for he's
a prize." And then, as two planters bore him from the room: "Sleep ye now,
my fair young Laureate; in all thy orifices be my sins remembered!"

29: THE UNHAPPY END OF MYNHEER WILHELM
TICK, AS RELATED TO THE LAUREATE BY MARY
MUNGUMMORY, THE TRAVELING WHORE 0' DORSET

BY THE TIME EBENEZER HAD QUITE SLEPT OFF THE EFFECTS OF HIS RUM,

the sky over Maryland had already begun to lighten. During the night—
which happened to be the last in September— the Indian summer had given
way to more characteristic autumn weather; indeed, the early morning
air was positively cold, and it was the chattering of his teeth, and general
shivering, that woke the Laureate up.

"Dear God!" he cried, and sat up at once. He found himself in a sort
of corncrib at one end of a stable, presumably behind the ordinary, his
legs and trunk buried in the coarse-grained ears. One at a time his woes
revealed themselves: he had lost Maiden forever and had surely alienated
Burlingame as well— whose shocking declarations, the poet now felt cer-
tain, had been invented deliberately for their retaliatory and sobering effect.

'Tfaith, I had it coming!" he reflected.

He was, moreover, in a wretched state of health: his head throbbed from
the rum, the light hurt his eyes, and his stomach was still none too strong.
The chill air, in addition, had turned his previous indisposition into a real
ague: he sneezed and shivered and ran at the nose, and ached in every
joint.

"Lovely treatment for their Laureate!" He resolved to chastise the pro-
prietor of the inn severely, even sue him if he could find proper grounds,
and it was not until he stirred to carry out this resolve that he realized
the main cause of his chill: his coat, hat, and breeches were gone, and he
lay clothed in hose and drawers only— his erstwhile companions had appar-
ently taken advantage of his condition to steal his clothes. He could think
of nothing to do except appeal for help from the first person to bring a
horse out to the stable; in the meantime he was obliged to dig a sort of
well into the corncobs, lower himself into it, and pack the rough ears all
about him to keep the breeze off.

"Out on't!" he swore after an hour had passeU 'Where are the man's
customers?"

He attempted to while away the minutes by composing couplets to flay

[428] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

all innkeepers, from that one who had put Joseph and Mary in the stable
at Bethlehem to the one who allowed the Laureate of Maryland to sleep
in a miserable corncrib— but his heart was not in his work, and he gave it
up when he found himself unable to summon a rhyme for diabolical. He had
not eaten since noon of the previous day: as the sun rose, his stomach
growled and rumbled. His sneezing grew more severe, and he had nothing
more delicate than a corncob on which to wipe his nose. At length, begin-
ning to fear that he would perish of exposure before anyone came to rescue
him, he raised a great shout for assistance. Again and again he called, to
no avail, until at last a large and blowzy woman of middle age, happening
to drive her wagon into the yard, heard his cries, reined in her horse, and
came over to the stable.

"Who's in there?" she demanded. "And what in thunder ails ye so?" Her
voice was loud and husky, and her proportions— more truly seen now she
was standing— prodigious. She wore the ubiquitous Scotch cloth of the work-
ing Marylander; her face was red-brown and wrinkled, and her grey hair
as tangled as an old brier-thicket. So far from showing alarm at Ebenezer's
outcries, her eyes narrowed with what seemed to be anticipatory mirth,
and her half-toothed mouth already smiled.

"Keep hence!" cried Ebenezer. "Pray come no nearer till I explain!
I am Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of this province."

"Ye do not tell me! Well, I am Mary Mungummory,, that once was
called the Traveling Whore o7 Dorset, but I don't boast oft. Why is't ye
linger in the corncobs, Master Poet? Are ye making verse or making water?"

"God forfend I'd choose such a sanctuary to piss in," the poet replied,
"and 'twould want a cleverer wight than I to turn a corncob into art."

The woman chuckled. "Belike thou'rt playing unnatural games, then?"

"From what I've learnt of Marylanders these few days, I'm not surprised
that you should think so. Howbeit, 'tis only your assistance I crave."

"Well, now, is that a fact!" Mary laughed immensely and approached
the corncrib.

"Nay, madam!" Ebenezer pleaded. "I fear you've misconstrued me: I've
not a farthing to buy aught of your services."

"De'il have your farthings," the big woman said. "I care naught for far-
things till the sun goes down. Twill be enough for me to see what a poet
looks like." She climbed up into the corncrib, rumbling with amusement.

"Stay hence!" Ebenezer raked desperately at additional ears of corn
to cover his shame. "*Tis but a Christian service I beg of you, madam."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 429 ]

Briefly he explained his plight, and ended by imploring Mary to find him
some clothing at once, before the ague carried him off.

The whole story vastly entertained her, and to the poet's joy she said,
"'Tis no chore at all, young man: I've a pair or two o' breeches in my
wagon, I'm certain." She explained that her sobriquet was the pride of her
younger years, when she had traveled by wagon from plantation to planta-
tion to practice her trade. Now that she was old, she had turned to pro-
curing for a living; she and her girls made a monthly circuit of every settle-
ment and large plantation in the county, breaking their schedule only for
such events as the semi-yearly sessions of the court.

From her wagon she fetched a pair of buckskin trousers, a shirt of the
same material, and Indian moccasins, all of which she flung up to Ebenezer.

"Here ye be, sir/' she said with a chuckle, and climbed up after. "They
belong to a young Abaco gallant name o' Tom Rockahominy^ that lives
in Gum Swamp. He had to bid us a quick farewell last night when a troop
of Wiwash braves moved in. Put 'em on."

"I cannot express my gratitude," Ebenezer said, Baiting for her to leave.
"Thou'rt almost the first kind soul I've met in Maryland."

"Make haste," the woman urged. "I am dying to see what you brave lads
look like, that have love on the brain from one verse to the next."

It was only with the greatest difficulty that Ebenezer persuaded her to
vacate the corncrib long enough for him to dress. Indeed, his efforts would
have been entirely in vain, so determined was she to satisfy her curiosity,
had not his extraordinary modesty amused her even more.

"The plain truth is, madam, I am a virgin, and mean to remain one.
No woman in my memory hath ever seen my body."

"Dear mother of God!" Miss Mungummory cried. "I will pay ye two
hundredweight o' tobacco to be the first— that is the price of one o' my
girls!"

But the poet declined her offer, and it was with awe as well as mirth
that at last she climbed out of the corncrib.

"At least ye might tell me somewhat about it, seeing I did ye a service.
Haply Nature played the niggard with ye, and thou'rt ashamed?"

"I am a man like other men," Ebenezer said stiffly,, "and I quite ap-
preciate my debt to you, Miss Mungummory. Tis merely that I am loath
to break my personal vows; else out of gratitude I would engage you in
your professional capacity."

"Ah now, sir, such a boast doth not become ye! A man like others
ye may well be, but think npt thou'rt a match for my professional capacity!"

[430] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

She laughed so hard that it was necessary for her to sit down on the earthen
floor of the stable. "I once knew a salvage down the county, had the fear-
somest way with him ye ever could imagine. There was the man for my
professional capacity! Belike ye've heard what happens to a man when
they hang him? Well, sir, the day they hanged poor Charley for the murther
of my sister— it makes the tears come yet when I recall the picture of
him ... "

"I say now, Miss Mungummory, this is extraordinary!" Ebenezer finished
dressing and climbed out of the corncrib. "What was this Indian's name?"

But Mary could not reply at once, for the sight of the poet sent her into
new flights of hilarity. He was indeed an uncommon spectacle: the Indian
garments were far too small for his towering frame, and were rendered
doubly bizarre by contrast with his English hose.

"I thought I heard you call him Charley" Ebenezer said with as much
dignity as he could muster, "and I wondered whether I'd not heard some-
thing of him before/'

"Oh,, everybody knows of Charley Mattassin," Mary said when she caught
her breath. "One of the folks he murthered was my sister Katy, the Sea-
going Whore o' Dorset/'

"Marry, this is fantastic! The wretch murthers your sister, and you speak
almost endearingly of him! And what is this about a seagoing whore?
'Sdeath!"

"Tis what they called her, and God rest her jealous soul, I bear no
malice toward her, for all she turned my Charley's head."

Nothing would do then but she tell Ebenezer the story of her sister's
murder at the hands of Charley Mattassin— a story which, despite his im-
patience to find Burlingame, the Laureate consented to hear, both be-
cause he owed his rescue to the teller and because he had recognized the
murderer as that same incorrigible Indian who had told Father Thomas
Smith of Joseph FitzMaurice's martyrdom. He drew up a wooden box to
sit upon and pulled self-consciously at his shirt sleeves as if to stretch them
into fit. Mary Mungummory elected to remain seated on the ground, but
took the trouble to prop her great back against the wall of the stable before
she began her tale.

" 'Tis as true a thing of women as of cats," she asserted, "that whatso-
ever they are told they may not have, that thing they will move Heav'n
and earth to get— particularly where love is concerned. God help the hus-
band that obliges his wife's least whim: he'll be a wittol ere he's two years
wed! As one o' your poets hath written:

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 431 ]

When old Man takes young Wife to warm his Bower,
He finds his Cuckold's Horns among her Dower"

"That is well put," Ebenezer said, "though what connection it might
bear to your story I can't say."

"My sister Katy had just such a husband, and schemed his ruin, but was
hoist by her own petard." Mary sighed. "Kate was less a sister than a daugh-
ter to me. Our mother walked the streets near Newgate Market, and in
thirty years o' whoring made but two mistakes: the first was to trust a
parson, and the second was to trust a physician."

Ebenezer expressed surprise at such cynicism in so charitable a soul as
that of his benefactress. "Is there no one you trust?"

Mary shrugged and said, " Tis a question o' what ye'd trust 'em with,
is't not? In any case I bear 'em no grudge: When a fox hath a hen within
his grasp, he mil eat her, and when a man hath a woman in his power,
he will swive her. My mother was a starving orphan girl that begged about
the streets for food. Ere she reached thirteen, so many men had tried to
force her that she begged the rector of her parish for sanctuary and was
admitted to his kitchen as a scullion. This rector was a proper Puritan,
and not an evening passed but he called her to his chambers to harangue
her on the Labyrinth of the Heart, and Original Sin, and the Canker in
the Rose. To bolster her against the carnal wiles of men he devised a set
of spiritual exercises,, one of which was to uncover himself in her presence
and oblige her to grasp him like a sacred relic, at the same time reciting
a prayer against temptations of the flesh. He was much concerned for
her virginity, and at the same time doubtful of her strength and honesty;
for this reason on Sunday nights she was obliged to confess to him every
lustful thought that had crossed her mind through the week, after which
he would examine whether she still had her maidenhead as she claimed."

"He was a hypocritical wretch!" the poet declared.

"Haply so," Mary said indifferently, "but I doubt it. He was a wondrous
kind and gentle minister, the pride of his parishioners, and raised my
mother as a member of his family. Methinks he saw no evil at all in
what he did, e'en in his spiritual exercises, that waxed more arduous as the
girl grew older. When she was fifteen, and still a virgin, he had so schooled
her to resist the fires of lust that they could sit for hours naked on his
couch and exchange every manner of caress, talking all the while of the
loftiest and most edifying matters; to do this was his pride and his delight,
so Mother said, and the virtuous climax of a saintly week."

[432] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Ebenezer shook his head. "The heart's a labyrinth indeed, as he declared!"

"Aye, that it is," Mary agreed with a laugh, "and anon the wight got
lost in'tl The riper grew his charge, the more concerned grew he for her
honor. She was such an eager and accomplished pupil, and he had given
her such a wondrous education— what a waste if some blackguard forced
her against her will, and the joys of swiving turned her head from virtue!
This notion so possessed him that he talked of nothing else, and for all
my mother's vows that she loathed no thought like that of fornication, he
knew no peace till he devised the most rigorous spiritual exercise of
all . . ."

"Ah God, don't tell me 1"

Mary nodded, shaking with mirth. " Twas but the natural end of all
that went before. One Sabbath night whilst they knelt in prayer he went
round behind and made a mighty thrust at her; when she cried out
he explained 'twas but her final lesson in shackling fleshly passions, and
bade her go on with her prayers as if she were in church. Albeit she was
much troubled in spirit, and no silly child despite her innocence,, she thought
it better to oblige him than to seem ungrateful for all his past kindness;
therefore she made no farther protest, but only hoped he would take meas-
ures to avoid certain consequences, and began the prayer again. Quick as
a wink, on the words Which art in Heav'n, he took her maidenhead, and
if he'd a mind to commit the sin of Onan for her protection, he had no
time, for on the words Thy kingdom come, I was conceived."

"rfaith!"

"The prayer went no farther, for in the cold light that all men look
through after swiving, the rector knew the error of his ways and turned
my mother out. From there 'twas no great step to harlotry, inasmuch as
she was trained already to do the tricks of love as lightly as a deacon trims
his candles, with no stirrings o' the heart. I was bom and raised in the
alleys o' Newgate, and ere ever I saw thirteen I had sold my first fruits
for two pound sterling to a gentleman of St. Andrew's Undershaft and
was walking the streets with mother. 'Twas this led her to her second mis-
take, with the physician "

"I doubt not 'tis a tale well worth the hearing," Ebenezer interrupted,
"But I'd liefer you hasten to the matter at hand, else I'll not have time
to hear you out."

"As't please ye," Mary chuckled. "I'll say no more than that my sister
Katy was the issue oft, as was I of her first, and my mother died a-bearing.
I was but fifteen then myself, and obliged to work the night through to

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [433^

feed the twain of us, but I raised Katy like my own daughter, and when
she was old enough to stand the gaff but young enough to whet the jaded
lust o' the wealthy, I made her a fine first match with a Scottish earl that
was stopping in London, and prenticed her into the trade. When we leamt
what prices were for women in the Plantations, 'twas I that brought us
over and set us up in Maryland, where we plied our business with profit
for many a year. Yet so far from feeling thankful for my care, young Kate
did e'er abuse and despise me. She was wont to play the lady at every
chance, and take my labors as her due, and declare 'twas my fault she was
a whore. No man was good enough for Kate, and while 'tis true an air
of refinement doth ever raise a harlot's price, she must never be refractory
in the bed; but so capricious was dear Katy, she'd ofttimes lure a man
to hire her and then throw his money in his face!

"Now there lived a wealthy Dutchman on the Little Choptank River,
name of Wilhelm Tick; he was a jolly old widower, round as a ball and
canny as a Jew, that had got his fortune raising livestock in lieu o' sot-weed,
and worked like any slavey to improve it. This Wilhelm had two grown
sons named Willi and Peter, the one not worth a farthing and the other
not a fart, that did naught from day to mortal day but drink Barbados rum
and race their horses up and down the roads o' Dorset. They were great
blond hulking wights, the pair of 'em, more crafty than bright, and since
they knew they were old Wilhelm's only heirs, they were content to let
him labor to an early grave whilst they spent a part of their inheritance
in advance. Tis not marvelous to hear that little Kate was a great favorite
with these gentlemen, so like were their tempers; devil the bit I warned
her they were cruel and shifty louts, that oft as not drank up her fee be-
fore she had a penny oft, she would none o' my advice, and gave 'em
their will o' her whene'er they pleased.

"'Twas not till a year of this had passed that I learned her true plan:
old Wilhelm, it turned out, knew well his sons were idle spendthrifts, that
cared not a fig for all he'd done for them, and after much debate with
himself had vowed to change his entire style of life. He resolved to -toil
no more to increase his wealth but enjoy what he had ere he died, and
spend the balance of his years doing the things men do for pleasure.

"Just about this time Willi and Peter found that Katy would have no
more of 'em, for all they bribed and threatened. And albeit none knows
to this day how she contrived it, within the month she was the bride of
Mynheer Wilhelm Tick himself, that little dreamed what he'd wed! The
first the brothers knew oft was when they found her in their house, by

[4341 TBE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Wilhelm's side, and their father said, 'Willi and Peter, this little girl is
your new mother. We love each other with all our hearts, and ye must
cherish and respect her as ye would your own dear mother if she were alive/

"Then they were obliged to bow to Katy and kiss her hand, but as soon
as Wilhelm was gone they turned on her, and held her by the arms, and
said, 'What have ye told our father, to turn his feeble head? D'ye think to
steal his wealth and leave us none? What will he say when we tell him
thou'rt a Bridewell whore with lash-marks on your back, and have been
swived by every wretched wight in Dorset?' But Katy sniffed at their
threats, for she had given Wilhelm to know she was an orphan and a virgin,
and had been whipped by her heartless sister for not turning to harlotry/'

"That was the most unkindest cut of all," Ebenezer commiserated.

"'Twas very like her, though/' Mary sighed. "And to protect herself
from harm, she threatened in turn that should they make a move to injure
or malign her, she would complain to Wilhelm they were out to make him
a cuckold. Thus they were obliged to stew in silence whilst their father
doted shamefully on Kate, and jumped to please her slightest whim. On
their wedding night she used every trick I'd taught her to make a man o'
Mynheer Wilhelm, with small success; for unlike Boccaccio's leek "

"Boccaccio!" cried the Laureate. "How is't you know Boccaccio? Tis
too marvelous!"

Mary laughed. "Tis e'en more marvelous than ye think, as I'll explain
anon. Unlike Boccaccio's leek, I was about to say, that hath a white head
and a green tail, poor Wilhelm bore more likeness to the hound he called
a dachshund, whose tail lags many paces behind his head and never can
o'erhaul it But by one means or another, Kate got him briefly starched,
and then raised such a hue and cry ye'd have thought she was Pasiphae
being rogered by the bull/'

" 'Sbody, madam! First Boccaccio and now Pasiphae!"

"Old Wilhelm thought he'd got her maidenhead, and the more injury
she feigned, the more he puffed with pride. He could not do enough for
her after that, so pleased he was, and within the week he declared to Willi
and Peter that inasmuch as Katy had brought him his first joy in years,
whereas they had given him naught but pain, he had altered the terms
of his will and testament: one moiety of his estate was to pass to Kate,
and the other to be divided between the boys.

"This the wastrels could not abide, more especially since their father
had taken to toiling so strenuously in the bed that his health was slipping
fast; 'twould not be long ere he perished of the effort, and they would

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 435 ]

be done out of their legacy. But so like to theirs in craftiness was Katy's
disposition, she knew well what they schemed, and laid plans of her own
to have the best of 'em."

At this point in her narrative Mary's face lost its perpetual expression of
good humor; her eyes darkened, her plump mouth pursed, and lowering
her head, she worried a pebble on the ground with an oat-straw.

" Tis here that Charley Mattassin steps on stage/' she said.

"Ah," Ebenezer's face brightened. "The murtherous salvage Indian."

"Ye speak from ignorance," Mary said sharply. "Methinks ye should have
learned by now what folly it is to judge ere ye know the facts. Charley
Mattassin was my lover, and the dearest lover e'er a woman had."

Ebenezer blushed and apologized, and entreated her to proceed with
the story.

"Charley Mattassin!" she sighed, and narrowed her downcast eyes. "I
scarce know how to make ye see him clear."

"I have heard already he was the son of a salvage king," the poet offered,
"and had a wondrous hatred of the English."

Mary nodded. "He was the son of Chicamec, that no white man hath
seen and lived to tell it. His people are a kind of Nanticokes that call
themselves Ahatchwhoops; they live to themselves in the wildest parts of
the Dorset marshes, and move their town from place to place."

"Marry! Why doth the Governor not reduce 'em?"

"Because he ne'er could find 'em, for one thing. Besides, their number
is small, and they live entirely amongst themselves. 'Tis easier to forget them
than to hunt 'em out and kill 'em at the peril of your life and member.
These Ahatchwhoops never look for trouble, but when an Englishman falls
into their hands they either kill him or make him more wretched than a
eunuch."

Ebenezer shuddered at the thought. "'Twas perilous to take one for
a lover, was't not?"

Now tears welled up in Mary's eyes. "He was my first and only love,
was Charley Mattassin. I was forty years old when I first saw him, and he
no younger, but for the both of us 'twas love at first swiving. His father,
Chicamec, had sent him on an embassy to another salvage king, Quassape-
lagh "

"Quassapelagh!" cried the Laureate, and caught himself on the verge
of revealing his connection with that fugitive chief.

"Aye, the famous Anacostin King that lately broke from jail. God alone
knows what mischief lay behind the errand, but 'twas Mattassin's first ad-

[436] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

venture amongst the English. His plan then was to cross the Bay direct
in his canoe, but he got no farther than the straits off Tangier Sound ere
a squall o' wind drove him onto the Dorset mainland, 'Twas my good for-
tune I was going my rounds just then, and chanced to drive along a path
beside the straits. Mattassin— he had no English first name then, of course
— Mattassin had lost his canoe in the storm and, seeing he was in English
country, had vowed to kill the first white man that passed and steal his
horse. He hid himself in the bushes by the path, and when my wagon
passed he sprang aboard and knocked me from the seat."

"Mercy!"

"His first thought was to kill me and take my scalp, but on reflection
he resolved to rape me first." Mary's eyes shone. "D'ye grasp it, Master
Poet? Fd been a whore for twenty-eight years, all told. Some twenty
thousand times I had been swived— give or take a thousand— and by almost
that many different men; there was no sort or size of man I had not known,
so I'd have sworn, nor any carnal deed I was not master of. I had been
forced too many times to count, by paupers and poltroons, and more than
once myself had been employed to rape young men."

"Stay," Ebenezer exclaimed. "That is impossible!"

"Don't tempt your fate, dear," Mary warned with a smile. "I know your
thoughts, but naught's impossible at the end of a pistol." She laughed and
wept at once. "I've not told ye yet the best of all: he was not tall, was
Charley, but he was a sturdy wight, and strong in the muscles; yet when
he set about to do his dastard deed, I saw he had no more to do't with
than any pitiful puppy-dog! He was, I swear't, less blest by half than most
boys in their cradles, and withal he meant to soil the honor o' Mary Mun-
gummory herself! Tis as if ye took a bodkin to scuttle a frigate!

"So struck was I by the sight of him, 'twas only his tomahawk reined
in my mirth, and I'd no more have resisted, than would a plowhorse the
assault of a flea. "Have done with't, Charley/ says I, making up the name
for a tease, Tve two trappers and a sot-weed factor waiting up the path/
Whereupon he set to work, and 'sbody, ere I knew what struck I was
hollowing for joy!"

The Laureate frowned, "I am not privy to such matters, but this hath
an air of non sequitur, or some other of the schoolmen's fallacies,"

Mary breathed nostalgically. "I have known scholards a-plenty,, but
no phalluses like this!"

"Nay, Miss Mungummoiy, you mistake my meaning!"

"And you mine," laughed Mary. "For you must know, sir, the wench that

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

hath been twenty thousand times a harlot is no more a child: she could
play Europa7s game and be none the worse for't. But just as a blind man,
lacking sight, grows wondrous keen of nose and ear, or a deaf-mute learns
to hear with his eyes and speak with his hands, so had my Charley, unbe-
knownst to me, learnt strange and wondrous means to reach his end! Thus
had good Mother Nature cleared her debt to him, after the fashion of the
proverb: what she had robbed from Peter, she bestowed on Paul/7

Ebenezer did not quite see the aptness of the saying, but he understood
in substance what she meant.

" 'Tis past my knowledge what arts he practised, and past my power to
tell my joy. Suffice it to say, there was enough o' Mother's blood in me
that my heart was a castle, and of two hundred men not one had come in
sight oft. But my Charley, that had not even a lance to tilt with, in two
minutes' time had o'ertopped the breastworks, spanned the moat, hoist the
portcullis, had his will of every crenel and machicoulis, and raised the
flag o' passion from the merlons of my keep!"

" 'Sheart!" the poet whispered.

" 'Twas some time ere I regained my proper senses, so mad was I with
bliss, but when I was myself again I laid hold of his hair, summoned all
the lusty lore my years had taught me, and so repaid him in his coin that
for half an hour he lay nine parts a-swoon. The upshot oft was, he ne'er
saw town or father again, and got no closer to Quassapelagh than my wagon,
wherein we lived thenceforth like hot-souled gypsies. I played the whore
no more, but indented other girls to make my rounds, and clove to Charley
like a silly bride."

"How is't he did not lose his hatred of the English?"

Mary chuckled and shook her head. "That is beyond my gifts to say.
He was wondrous deep, was Charley, and sharp in the wits: in a month
he'd learnt to read and speak our tongue like any gentleman; he made
me scour the Province for books, and albeit I could not grasp the half of
'em myself, he always plumbed their meaning at a glance. Twas as if he'd
thought the selfsame thoughts himself, and better ones. Yet for all they'd
arouse him, he would not deign to read 'em himself, but set me to't, albeit
'twas not long ere I'd have to stop and ask him what was meant by such-a-
word."

"Indeed!" Ebenezer marveled. "Twas thus you learnt to speak of
Boccaccio and the Greeks?"

"Aye. How he loved and loathed the lot of 'em, and myself as well!
Read him half a tale or half a chapter out o' Euclid, he could spin ye the

[438] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

balance from his head; and if it differed from the text, 'twas the author,
like as not, that came off badly. Ofttimes I felt his fancy bore a clutch
of worlds, all various, of which the world these books described was one "

"Which, while 'twas splendid here and there," the Laureate interrupted,
'Tie could not but loathe for having been the case!9

"That's it!" Mary cried, her eyes bright. "I could ne'er have found the
words myself to say't, but you have laid your finger on its very root and
fundament!"

Ebenezer sighed, recalling Burlingame. "I know a man who hath that
very genius, and that very manner: he loves the world, and comprehends
it at first glance— sometimes even sight unseen— yet his love is flavored with
a similar contempt, from the selfsame cause, which leads him to make game
of what he loves."

This analysis of the type must have struck home, for tears ran freely
down the harlot's ruddy cheeks. " Twas in like manner he looked on me,"
she said. "He loved me— of that I'm sure— yet for all my bag o' tricks I was
merely woman, and but one woman. My Charley's curiosity and imagina-
tion knew no such bounds: I often pleased him, but ne'er surprised him;
naught could I do that he'd not already dreamt of."

"And would you say," pressed the poet, much aroused, "that this cosmic
love I spoke of was as strong in his flesh as in his fancy? What I mean,
did he lust for aught that struck his eye, be't man or maid or mandrake
root, and yet despise the world for its meagerness of bedfellows?"

"That and more," Mary answered, "for so possessed was he with this
same lust and fancy, he e'en despised himself that he could not faicy
more! Marry come up, there never was the like of him in the history of
the world!"

But Ebenezer covered his face with his hands and shook his head. "There
was and is, wondrous as't may seem. My friend and former tutor,, that till
now I think I'd never fathomed, fits this picture marvelous well! Do you
know the man they call Tim Mitchell?"

Mary's expression changed to alarm. "Are ye one o' Mitchell's spies,
put here to draw me out?"

Surprised, Ebenezer assured her that he was not, and declared further,
observing her great apprehension, "I did not mean that Mitchell was my
friend and tutor, but that just as this Charley is so like my friend in every
way— save the color of his skin and that defect of his natural parts you
spoke of— so this Tim Mitchell, that I met not three days past, doth in

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 439 ]

some respects remind me of my friend. Past that I know naught o' the
man/'

"Thou'rt not his agent?"

"I swear not. Why is't you fear him so?"

Mary sniffed and glanced about her. "No matter why. Yell learn soon
enough if ye take him for a friend." Beyond this she would say no more
to satisfy the poet's curiosity, and only with considerable entreaty could
he persuade her even to return to the story, so uneasy had the name Tim
Mitchell made her.

"What hath your lover Charley to do with Kate and Mynheer Tick?" he
asked. " 'Twere cruel to leave so good a tale half-told/'

" Tis not far to the end oft/' Mary grumbled, and with some reluctance
picked up the thread of her story. "Kate soon got wind of how my life
was changed, and lost no time in seeking out the cause oft. I knew full
well she'd set her cap for Charley directly she laid eyes on him, and so
made every effort to avoid her. The plain fact is, 'twas not till he had killed
her that I learned he'd been two months her lover."

"Nay!"

"He told me so himself, along with many another thing, before they
took him off to jail. Somehow Miss Kate had sought him out, unbe-
knownst to me, and told him she was my sister. She was fair of face, as I
was not, and her body was a sweetmeat, where mine was e'er a nine-course
meal. But for all her conniving she was dull and gameless, and a sluggard
in the bed, and spiteful, and a snot; and while Charley loved and hated
me at once, he could only loathe a bitch like Kate, as even he confessed.
In sooth,, that is the explanation oft."

Ebenezer nodded. "An hour ago I'd not have grasped your meaning,
but it seems no paradox now. Why did he do the awful murthers?"

"They hanged him for the lot of 'em," Mary said, "but Kate was the
only one he slew. The rest slew one another, albeit dear Charley was the
engineer."

She explained that on becoming Katy's lover, Charley had soon learned
how matters stood in the house of Mynheer Tick, and for reasons not im-
mediately clear had taken pains to gain the brothers' confidence— not a
difficult achievement, since they were regular patrons of Mary's traveling
brothel and knew no more than did its proprietress of his relationship with
Kate. He guided them on hunting trips, raced horses with them, and at their
invitation was a frequent visitor on the Tick estate, where he would drink
and carouse on the lawn with Willi and Peter and slip away at intervals

[440] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

to cuckold Mynheer Wilhelm. It was not long before the brothers made
known to him their fear and hatred of their stepmother, and Charley, with
a laugh, at once proposed a double murder.

"Nay!" Willi had cried. "Thou'rt not serious!"

To which Charley had replied, " Twould be quite easy. Peter could go
down to the end of the path that runs through the woods behind the house,
and hide himself in the junipers where you were wont to swive Miss Katy
in the old days. Then Willi can send Katy down there- on some pretext,
whereupon Peter leaps upon her and kills her. In the meanwhile, 'twill
be simple for Willi to murther old Wilhelm alone in the house. Do't with
a knife or tomahawk, and blame the Indians for't."

Willi had applauded the plan at once, but Peter, though he expressed
his readiness to scalp Kate, was less enthusiastic on the matter of parricide,
"A common whore is no great loss, but can we not leave Father to die
naturally, or from grief? He is old, and shan't stand long 'twixt us and
wealth."

Charley Mattassin had then replied, "Do as you wish, 'tis your affair;
but methinks you'll be no sooner rid of Kate than he will wed the next
wench with art enough to fool him."

"Aye," Willi had agreed. "Let's kill him now. He hath no love for us."

At length Peter was obliged to overcome his reluctance, and there being
no reason for delay, he left the drinking-bout to take up his station at the
end of the path, carrying with him his hunting knife. But scarcely had he
gone before Willi, who was the cleverer of the two, began to question
the division of responsibility.

" ?Tis nowise fair," he complained to Charley, "that I be given the taste-
less task of murthering father, whilst Peter hath Katy to himself in the
junipers and may do his list with her ere he doth her in." And the longer
he reflected, the less equitable seemed his lot, until at last, forgetting who
had proposed the scheme, he commenced to blame Peter for it.

"Check your wrath," Charley had urged him then. " Twas I that planned
it thus, and for a purpose: send Katy down to Peter, and then tell Wilhelm
they are swiving in the junipers. Two of the three will soon be dead, and
you've only to kill the third to have the whole estate yourself."

It did not take long for Willi to see the merits of this shocking plan,
and when a cursory search failed to discover his stepmother, he readily
acted on the Indian's next advice: "Tell Wilhelm anyhow, and I shall run
to warn Peter that his father comes to shoot him. The result will be the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 441 ]

same, and in the meantime you can search farther for the whore and take
your pleasure on her."

Willi went off beaming towards his father's accounting room to carry
out the scheme, and Charley took a short cut through the marshes to
the juniper grove where Peter waited, knife in hand. But so far from warn-
ing him of Wilhelm's approach, the Indian said "Mistress Kate is hurrying
hither and never looked more fetching. Since you mean to kill her in any
case, why not have your will of her first? The privy dream of every man
is rape, for there is no pleasure like it in the earth. Drop your breeches,
man, and stand in ambuscado."

"Peter needed no urging/' Mary Mungummory laughed, "For dull wits
do not mean dull desires, and a clotpoll in the classroom may be brilliant
in the bed: even as Charley left, the boy lowered his breeches, took cod
in hand, and waited for his victim to arrive."

"But where was your sister whilst all these machinations were in progress?"
Ebenezer demanded. "Why did the salvage plot against her, and why
could Willi not find her?"

Mary clucked her tongue. "She was neither innocent nor idle, ye may
be sure." In fact, Mary explained, nothing of what had transpired was
news to Kate, for it was she, and not Charley, who had conceived the
scheme to begin with. She had told him in detail of her fear of the brothers
and of her life with Wilhelm— how, unable to aspire to natural intercourse,
he forced her to dance for him lasciviously every night, not in his chamber
but in the accounting room, amid his tobacco-notes and business papers,
where the -salt of inconguity might season his feeble pleasure— and she had
pledged to marry Charley and make him master of the Tick estate if
he would aid her in disposing of the other legatees. Their trysting-place
was a thick clump of myrtles some distance down the path behind the
house: hither it was that she would slip away any hour of the day or
night when she heard her lover's signal— a high-pitched yelp like that
of a fox or an Indian cur; here it was that she would linger while he
caroused with the brothers, and wait for him to find pretext to join her;
and here it was she lay this fateful evening, and watched the scheme
unfold. She had seen Peter, knife in hand, go down the path to the juni-
per trees, not far distant, and had even heard Charley urging him to
rape before he slew; it was scarcely necessary for Charley to tell her,
when immediately afterwards he joined her in the myrtles, that their
conspiracy was successfully under way. Moreover, their hopes were addi-
tionally confirmed a few moments later, for Wilhelm himself came stalking

[442] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

down the path, a pistol in each hand and towering anger in his face, clearly
in response to Willf s announcement. And when he met the edifying spec-
tacle of his trouserless son, they could hear quite clearly the string of Dutch
curses he let fly.

"Wait!" they heard Peter cry. "For the love o' God, don't shoot!"

And Wilhelm, to their disappointment, instead of firing at once, asked
"Where is your mother, Peter?"

"I do not know!"

"Why were ye standing so," Wilhelm had demanded then, "with your
breeches in one hand and your shame in the 'Other?"

And it must have been that Wilhelm had come closer as he spoke, and
threatened with the pistols, for Peter grunted and then replied, "There,
ye see, 'twas but to ease nature I came hitherl"

"Willi told me ye were swiving Katy from stump to stump," Wilhelm
had declared.

"Ah," said Peter. "But I am not doing what Willi said, as any wight
can see."

"Then why should Willi send me running hither?" his father wanted
to know, and Peter asserted that it was not he but Willi, who had designs
on Kate and had sent Wilhelm out of the house in order to catch her
alone and force her virtue.

"No!" had cried Wilhelm.

"Aye," Peter insisted.

"Ach/" said Wilhelm, and came crashing back along the path.

All this the two conspirators had clearly heard, and near the end of it,
from the direction of the house, had come the voice of Willi calling Katy's
name.

"What will happen now?" Katy had whispered to Charley.

" 'Tis time for Willi to give o'er his search for you," the Indian replied.
"If all goes well he'll come down the path to murther whoever^ left alive,
and Peter will come up to do the same."

He could explain no more, for by that time old Wilhelm had come up
as far as the clump of myrtles, brandishing his pistols and puffing with
fatigue. In fact, such toll had his emotions and exertions taken on him,
he suddenly stopped still, clutched his heart, and satxlown on a gum stump
in the middle of the path.

" Tis his foolish heart hath failed him!" Katy whispered, and Charley
clapped his hand over her mouth just in time to prevent their discovery

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [4431

by Willi, who at that moment came running down the path with his
musket at the ready.

"What ails you?" he asked his father.

Wilhelm clutched his son's arm and shook his head at the cynical tone
of the question. Great pain was on his face, and he spoke with difficulty.

"Why did you send me where no trouble was? Your brother was only
pissing, nothing more."

"Fogh," sneered Willi. "Why should he walk a mile into the woods to
piss, when for years he hath been doing it in the rosebush?"

"You send me to kill Peter, and Peter to kill you," Wilhelm went on,
"and both have foul designs on my sweet Kate. Either way I lose a son,
and belike my wife as well!"

"She is a common whore, and you a wretched old fool," Willi declared,
and without more ado let go a musket blast point-blank at his father's
chest.

"Now I shall do the same to him," Katy had whispered then, and fetching
a loaded pistol from her skirts, had taken aim at Willi. But again Charley
had restrained her, for the sound of the shot had brought Peter hurry-
ing up from the junipers, and before Willi could get powder and ball
into the gun, his brother was upon him with the knife. Over and over they
rolled in the dirt, and in a minute Willi lay beside his father with an open
throat.

Peter rose and wiped the knife blade on a leaf. "So," he said, and
said no more, for Katy shot him in the chest where he stood.

"God be praised!" she had cried aloud when it was done. "I am free of
the knaves at last, and a wealthy widow!" And so moved was she by the
spectacle of so many dead Dutchmen in the path, she would not leave
without mounting the gum stump about which they lay and dancing, for
Charley's benefit, the same dance that had served poor Wilhelm for
love-making.

"So now you have your heart's desire," Charley had observed.

"And so shall you," Kate had called back from the stump, "for ye shall
warm the Mynheer's bed with me anon. Come hither, now, and celebrate
our wealth!"

And not content to profane the dead by her lewd dance alone, Katy
had insisted that they do then and there on the gum stump what they
were wont to do secluded in the myrtles, and had whooped and yelped
throughout, Indian-fashion . . .

[4441

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Stay!" Ebenezer cried. "You do not mean to tell me "

"No less/' Mary declared. "What' s more, he asked her to cry their secret
signal-cry when the time came, and he did. a thing that he and I had
learnt together— a wondrous thing we'd vowed no other soul should ever

share . . ."

WI say " the poet protested, much embarrassed, but Mary raised her

hand for silence.

"And when she instantly let out the signal cry, he fetched up his

knife . . r

"Nay! He murthered her then and there?"

Mary nodded. "I'll say no more than this, that what he did is a famous
trick of soldiers the world over, Christian and heathen alike, with women
of the enemy."

"I shall be ill if you say more," warned Ebenezer.

"There is no more to tell," said Mary. "He walked off and left 'em
where they lay, all four together, and for want of heirs the estate passed
over to the Crown. The joke oft was, as Charley had known from the
first and not told either Kate or the brothers, 'twas not till the next sitting
of the Maryland Council that old Wilhelm's plea for denizenship was due
to be approved."

"I do not grasp the point."

"That means he died a Dutchman," Mary explained, "and aliens can't
will property in the first place: the Crown would have got the estate in any
event!" She laughed and got up off the stable floor. "'Twas his huge en-
joyment of this jest that undid Charley. That same night, in all innocence,
I proposed to him we do our little secret, and he took such a fit o' laughing
in the midst oft that I wept like a bride for the first time in my life!
He vowed he was sorry, and by way of apology told the entire story
just as you've heard it from me, laughing all the while, nor left out a single
small detail oft. He knew me inside out, did my sweet salvage: he knew
'twould tear my heart to hear he'd played me false,, and doubly so to hear
'twas Kate he'd done it with, and triply so to hear he'd done her to death;
yet he knew as well I must and would forgive him all— nay, he knew at
bottom I would love him the more for't when the shock had passed, and
he was right! What he didn't know, by a hundredth part, was how I prized
our little trick, not alone that we'd discovered it together, but because 'twixt
a man so ill endowed with manly parts and a woman too versed in men to be
impressed by any such endowment, this trick of ours was the entire world o'
love. 'Twas as if you and your mistress together had invented swiving, that

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 445 ]

no soul else on earth had ever thought of: think how ye'd feel then if she told
ye, not that she'd kissed another man, but that she'd taught him all that
glorious secret ye'd shared!"

"Really," Ebenezer said, "I "

"Ah, yes. Thou'rt still a virgin and can't know." Mary sighed. 'Then
bear't in mind, and one day ye'll see it clear enough. In the meanwhile 'tis
enough to say, my Charley's error was to tell me he'd shared that thing with
Katy. In his eyes it made the jest so much the funnier; in mine— i'God, I
could not speak, or weep another tear! I climbed from the wagon and ran
down the road, nor stopped till I reached Cambridge, a day and a half later,
and told the Sheriff that the Tick family was murthered, and their murtherer
was Charley Mattassin!"

Again the tears coursed down her cheeks.

"They found him waiting in the wagon, little dreaming what I'd done,
and packed him off to jail. I never spoke to him after that, but they
say he took it as a farther joke that I had played him false, and laughed
whene'er he thought oft. They say he still was chuckling when they led
him to the gallows, and I saw myself that when the noose snapped tight
two wondrous things occurred. The first I told ye at the outset, that what
was small in life grew uncommon large in death, as sometimes happens;
the other is that he died with that monstrous laugh upon his face, and
bore it to the gravel That is the tale."

"I ne'er have heard its like," swore Ebenezer. "Tis pathetic and te*
rible at once, and I am. still astonished by the likeness of this Indian to
my friend and former tutor! I would venture to say that if your Charley
had been born an Englishman he could play this world like a harpsichord,
as doth my friend, and that if my friend had been born a salvage Indian,
he too could die with just that bitter laugh." He shook his head. "What is
behind it? Your Charley and my friend, each in his way, came rootless to
the world we know; each hath a wondrous gift for grasping it, e'en a lust
for't, and manipulates its folk like puppeteers. My friend hath not yet
laughed after Charley's fashion, and God grant he never shall, but the po-
tential for't is there; I see it plainly from your tale. Despite his fearsome
joy in worldly lore, his passions and bold energies, he is much given to
sighs and fits of sullenness; a certain shrug he hath, and a particular mirth-
less smile. Tis as though like Jacob he grapples yet with some dark angel
in the desert, the which had got the better of your Charley; and 'tis no angel
of the Lord whose votaries have this laugh for their stigma, do you think?"

Mary mused at the stable door: "Twas the whole o' God's creation

[446] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Charley laughed at! I can hear him laugh at Kate when he did our thing
to her, and again when she barked, and he put her to the knife; when
I ride about my rounds or eat a meal, I hear that laugh, and it colors the
world I look at, and sours the food in my belly! Naught remains o- Wilhelm
Tick but his wretched ghost, that some say wanders nightly down Tick's
Path; and naught remains o' Charley save that laugh. The while I told this
tale to you Fve heard it. Each night I see him laughing in the hangman's
noose, and must needs liquor myself to sleep; yet all in vain, for sleep is
but a hot dream of my Charley, and I wake with his voiceless laugh
still in my ears. Ah God! Ah God!"

She could speak no more for misery. Ebenezer accompanied her out
to her wagon and helped her up to the seat, thanking her once more for
her generosity and for telling him the tale.

" 'Twas curiosity alone that pricked my interest/' he remarked with a
rueful smile. "I took an interest in your Charley when first I heard of him
from Father Smith in Talbot, and could not have said wherefore; but this
tale of yours hath touched me in unexpected ways, as oft good stories will."

Mary picked up the reins and took her whip in hand. 'Then ye must
pray 'twill touch ye no farther, Master Laureate, for as yet thou'rt still an
audience to that laugh."

"What do you mean?"

She leaned toward him, her great face puffed and creased with mirth,
and answered in a husky whisper: "Yesterday at court, when ye keelhauled
poor Ben Spurdance and signed your whole plantation o'er to that devil
William Smith "

Ebenezer winced at the memory. "FGod, then you were there to see
my folly?"

"I was there. What's more, Cooke's Point was erst a station on my route:
Ben Spurdance is an old and honest friend and client o' mine, and did
your father as good a job as any overseer could. I had as great a wish as
Ben to see Bill Smith undone . . ."

The Laureate was aghast. "You mean you saw what I was doing and
knew 'twas done in ignorance? Dear Heav'n, why did you not cry out,
or stay me ere I signed Smith's wretched paper?"

"I saw the thing coming the instant ye cried out who ye are," Mary re-
plied. "I saw poor Ben grow pale at your speech, and the knave Bill Smith
commence to gloat and rub his hands. I could have checked your folly in
a moment."

"Withal, I heard no frenzied warnings," Ebenezer said bitterly, "from

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 447 ]

you or anyone else save Spurdance, his trollop of a witness, and my friend
Henry— I mean Timothy Mitchell, that all had other reasons for alarm.
The rest of the crowd only whispered among themselves, and I even heard
some heartless devil laugh " He checked himself and frowned incredu-
lously at his benefactor. "Surely 'twas not you!"

" 'Twas my ruin as well as yours I laughed at, as Tim Mitchell might
explain if ye should ask him. 'Tis a disease, little poet, like pox or clapl
Where Charley took it, God only knows, but yesterday showed me, for
the first time, I've caught it from him!" She snapped the reins to start
her horse, and chuckled unpleasantly. "Stay virgin if ye can, lad; take
your maidenhead to the tomb, and haply ye shan't ever be infected! Hup
there!" She whipped up the horse with spirit and drove away, her head
flung back in mute hilarity.

30: HAVING AGREED THAT NAUGHT IS IN MEN SAVE
PERFIDY, THOUGH NOT NECESSARILY THAT JUS EST
ID QUOD CLIENS FECIT, THE LAUREATE AT LAST LAYS
EYES ON HIS ESTATE

MUCH MOVED AND DISCONCERTED, EBENZER STOOD FOR SOME MOMENTS

in the courtyard and endeavored vainly to compose himself before entering
the inn. Disturbing enough had been the insight into Burlingame afforded
him by the tale of Mynheer Tick: this final disclosure was almost beyond
assimilation!

"I must seek Henry out at once," he resolved, "despite what he hath said
of himself and Anna."

When he recalled Burlingame's taunting confessions of the night past,
his skin broke into heavy perspiration, his legs gave way, and he was obliged
to sit for a time in the dust with chattering teeth. In addition he took a
short fit of sneezing, for it was not wholly perturbation that afflicted him:
whether as a result of the "seasoning" or some other cause, he very definitely
was feverish, and his night in the corncrib had given him a cold as well.
Many hours had passed since his last meal, yet he had no 'appetite for
breakfast, and when he got to his feet in order to seek out Burlingame and
lodge a complaint with the innkeeper regarding the theft, of his clothes,
the ground swayed under him, and his head pounded

[448] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

<4Yet I must find him, for I have nor money nor direction."

He entered the inn and, oblivious to the stares his unusual appearance
drew, went straight to the barman— not the same who had served him on
the previous evening.

"By Heav'n!" he cried. "Tis the end of religion, when a man cannot
sleep safely e'en in a corncrib! Is't a den of thieves you keep? Shall the Lord
Proprietor leam that such crimes go unredressed in the inns of his
province?"

"Haul in thy sheets, lad," the barman said. " 'Tis not wise to go on so of
Lords Proprietors in these times."

Ebenezer scowled with embarrassment: in his dizziness he had forgot-
ten, as he was increasingly wont to do, that Lord Baltimore had no
authority in the Province and that he himself had never met that gentleman.

"Some wretch hath filched my clothes," he grumbled. The other patrons
at the bar laughed— among them a plump, swarthy little man in a black
suit who looked familiar.

"Ah well," the barman said, "that's not uncommon. Belike some wag
threw your clothes in the fire for a joke, or took 'em to replace his own as
was burnt. No hurt intended."

"As a joke! Marry, but you scoundrels have a nice wit!"

"If t gripe your bowels so, I'll not charge ye for last night's lodging. Fair
enough?"

"You'd charge a man money to sleep in that verminous rat's nest? In
sooth you shan't charge me! You'll return me my clothes or replace 'em,
and that at once, or laureateship be damned, all of Maryland shall feel the
sting of my rhymes!"

The barman's expression changed: he regarded Ebenezer with new in-
terest. "Thou'rt Mister Cooke, then, the Laureate of Maryland?"

"No other soul," Ebenezer said.

"The same that signed his property away?" He glanced at the black-
suited man, who nodded confirmation.

"I am that man," said Ebenezer stiffly, "and methinks you should repair
my loss out of pity, if no other sentiment moves you."

"That I'd do, sir," the barman said, "but that such charity would lead me
to the almshouse in a fortnight. Howbeit, if thou'rt the Laureate of Mary-
land I have a message for ye, from Timothy Mitchell."

"From Timothy? Where is he? What doth he say?"

The barman fished a folded scrap of paper from his breeches. "He left us
late last night, as I understand it, but writ this poem for ye to read."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [4491

"Poem?" Ebenezer snatched the paper. "I almost fear to read it!"
But he unfolded the paper as fast as he could and read with consterna-
tion:

To Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman,
Poet & Laureate of the Province of Maryland

When from the Com thou hiest thy Bum,
And to the Tavern haply come,
All stiff from chill Octobers Breezes,
Full of Sniffs, and Snots, and Sneezes,
Go not with many a Sigh and Groan
To seek out Colt or fragrant Roan;
For Roan, that seldom usrd to falter,
Hath fairly this time slipt her Halter,
And Colts gone with her, and I as well,
Leaving thee to fry in Hell
With all thy Poses and Buffoonery.
Perchance this Piece of fine Poltroonery
Will teach thee that with mortal Men
'Tis Folly to call any Friend;
For Friendship's but a fragile Farce
Twixt Man and Man. So kiss my Arse,
Poor Ebenezer, foolish Bard —
And henceforth ne'er relax thy GuardI

Timothy Mitchell, E«<?

For some moments after reading Henry's parting insults, Ebenezer was
dumb struck. His head felt near to bursting, and his eyes watered.

"Friendship a farce 'twixt man and man!" he cried at last. " 'Twixt thee
and me, Henry, let us say, for 'twixt me and thee it was no farce! Ah God,
deliver me from such another friend!"

The swarthy fellow in the black suit observed these lamentations with
amusement and said, "Bad news is't, Mister Cooke?"

"Bad news indeed!" the Laureate groaned. "Yesterday my whole estate;
today my clothes, my horse, and my friend lost in a single stroke! I see
naught for't but the pistol." Despite his anguish, he suddenly recognized
the man as the advocate who had pled for William Smith in court.

"By Blaise's wool comb, 'tis a wicked world," the fellow observed.

"Thou'rt no stranger to its evils, methinks!" the poet said.

"Ah now, take no offense at me, friend: St. Windoline's crook, 'twas
yourself that worked your ruin, not I! I merely labored for the interests of
my client, as every advocate must. Sowter's my name— Richard Sowter,
from down the county. What I mean,, sir, your advocate's a most pragmatical

I 45°] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

wight, that looks for justice no farther than his client's deeds. He tweaks
Justinian's beard and declares that jus est id quod cliens fecit. Besides, the
law's but one amongst my interests. Will ye take an ale with me?"

"I thank you/' Ebenezer sighed, but declined on the grounds that his
last night's liquor was still taking its toll on his head. "Forgive my rudeness,
sir: I am most distraught and desperate."

"As well ye might be, by St. Agatha's butchered bosoms! Tis a wicked
world, and rare ye find ,some good in't."

" 'Tis a wicked province; that I'll grant."

"Why," Sowter went on, " 'twas just last month, or the one before, a
young sprat came to see me, young fellow from down-county, he was, came
into the smithy where my office is— I run a smithy on the side,, ye know-
came in and says to me, 'Mr. Sowter/ he says, 1 need a lawyer/ 'St.
Huldrick's crab lice!' says I: 'What have ye done to need a lawyer?' 'Mr.
Sowter/ he says, 'I am a young fool, that I am/ he says. "I have lived the
spendthrift life, have I, and got myself in debt/ 'Ah well/ says I, 'by Giles's
hollow purse, I am no money-lender, son/ 'Nay, sir/ says he, 'the fact
oft is, my creditors were pressing hard, and I feared 'twas the pillory for
me, so what did I do? I hied me to Morris Boon, the usuring son o' Sodom/
'Peter's fingers, boy/ says I, 'Ye did not!' 'I did/ says he: 'I went to Morris
Boon and I says, Morris, I need money, I says. So Morris lent me on his
usual terms: that directly my debts are paid I must surrender me to his
beasty pleasures/ Thou'rt a Mathurin's fool!' cries I. 'That I am/ says the
lad. 'Now I've settled all my debts, and Morris is waiting his pleasure/ 'Son/
I says then,, 'pray to St. Gildas, for I cannot aid ye/ 'Ye must/ says he. 'I
have faith in ye/ 'It wants more than faith/ says I. 'I have more than faith/
says he. -'I've wagered money on ye/ And so I asked him, how was that?
And he replied, 'I wagered old Morris ye'd get me out o' my pickle/ 'St.
Dymphna protect ye/ says I. 'What did ye wager?' 'If ye get me fairly out,'
says he, 'Morris pays me again what he loaned me before, and 'tis yours
for saving me. If not, why then Morris vows he'll ravish the twain of us
from stump to stopgap/ Wretch!' says I. 'Had ye to fetch me thus into thy
unclean bargain?'

"But there was no help fort/' Sowter sighed. "On the morrow the lad
comes back, with Morris the usurer hard upon his heels. 'Preserve me!' says
the boy. 'Preserve thyself/ says Morris, and eyes me up and down. 'I want
the payment we agreed upon/ But I'd not been idle since the day before,
and so I said, 'Hold on, sir, by Appolonia's eyeteeth! Rein your horse! What
sum was't ye lent this idler here?' 'Twelve hundredweight o' sot-weed/ says

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 451 ]

Morris. 'And for what purpose?' To pay his debts/ says Morris. 'And under
what conditions?' 'That his debts once clear, lie's mine whene'er I fancy
him this month.' Well, then,' says I to the lad, that was like to beshit him-
self for fear, 'the case is closed, by Lucy's wick dipper: see to't ye never return
him his twelve hundredweight.' 'Why is that?' asks the boy, and Moms as
well. 'Why, Fridoline's eyeglasses/ says I, 'don't yssee't? If ye do not repay
him, your debts aren't clear, and so long as thou'rt encumbered, ye need
not go to Morris. The truth is, while thou'rt in debt thou'rt free!'

"St. Wulfgang's gout, sirs, I can tell ye old Morris set up a hollowing at
that, for I had swived him fair, and he's a man of his word. He paid the
young scamp another twelve hundredweight and sent him off with a curse;
but the more he thought oft, the more my trick amused him, till at the
end we laughed until we wept. Now then, by Kentigern's salmon, what was
I after proving?"

"That naught's in men save perfidy," said Ebenezer. "Yet the lad was
not wicked, nor were you in saving him."

"Ha! Little ye know," laughed Sowter. "My actual end was not to save
the lad but to fox old Morris, who many a time hath had the better of me.
As for the lad, by Wulstan's crozier, he never paid me, but took the tobacco-
note himself and doubtless went a-whoring. There is small good in men."
He sighed. "Why, there's a redemptioner this minute in my boat "

"No more!" cried Ebenezer, clutching his head hvhis hands. "What use
have I for farther tales? How is't I listen like a schoolboy to your prating,
when I have reached the end of the road? The pistol now is all I crave, to
end my pain."

"Oh la, St. Roque's hound-bitch!" Sowter scoffed. "Tis but the vagrant
track o' life, that beds ye now in clover, now in thistles. Make shift to bear't
a day at a time, and ten years hence yell still be sleeping somewhere, and
filling thy bowels with dinner, and rogering some wench from Adrian to
St. Yves."

"'Tis light to advise," said the poet, "but this day itself shall see me
starve, for I've naught to buy food with and nowhere to go."

"Cooke's Point is but a few hours' sail downriver. If I came half around
the world to find a place, by St. Ethelbert I'd not blow out my brains till
I laid eyes on't!"

This suggestion greatly surprised Ebenezer, "My valet awaits me there/'
he said thoughtfully, "and my— my betrothed as well, I hope. Poor Joan,
and loyal Bertrand! What must they think of me!" He gripped Sowter's

[ 452 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

aim. "D'you think that scoundrel Smith hath turned them out? I'll have
his head fort!"

"There, now, by Pieran's millstone!" Sowter said. "Thou'rt angry, and
anger's e'er a physic for despair. I know naught o' these folk ye speak of,
but I'm sure they'll meet no ill reception at Maldeai. Bill Smith hath his
shortcomings, yet he'd ne'er turn out your guests to starve, much less the
Laureate himself. Why, haply your friend Tim Mitchell's there as well, and
they're all at a game o' ducks and drakes, or dancing a morns dance!"

Ebenezer shook his head. "Yet e'en this last small joy shall be denied
me, for I've not the hire of a boat."

"Why then, by Gudule's lantern, ye ftiust come with me," the lawyer
said, and explained that while boat renting in general, and the Choptank
River ferry in particular, were among his side interests, he meant to sail out
to Maiden that very morning, and the Laureate was welcome to come along
as ballast. "I have some business there with Mr. Smith," he said, "and must
deliver him a servant that I bought this morning for a song."

Ebenezer murmured some words of gratitude; he was, in fact, scarcely
able to attend Sowter's speech, for his fever seemed to mount with every
passing minute. His head buzzed, his ears rang, and when they left the
inn and walked toward the wharf nearby, he viewed the scene before him
as with a drunkard's eyes.

"—•most cantankerous wight ye ever did see," he heard Sowter saying as
they reached the wharf. ."Swears by Gertrude's mousetrap he's no redemp-
tioner at all, but a servant seller out o' Talbot, that is victim of a monstrous
prank."

"I am not a well man," the Laureate remarked. "Really, I feel not well
at all."

"I've heard my share o' clever stories from redemptioners," Sowter went
on, "but St. Tom's packthread, if this one doth not take the prize! Why,
would ye believe it "

"'Tis the seasoning, belike," Ebenezer interrupted, though it could not
be said with certainty whether he was addressing Sowter or himself.

"Ye'll be all right, with a day in bed," the lawyer said. "What I was about
to say— nay, not there: my boat's that small sloop yonder by the post— what
I was about to say, this great lout claims his name is "

"Tom Tayloe!" roared a voice from the sloop. "Tom Tayloe o' Talbot
County, damn your eyes, and ye know't as well as I, Dick Sowter!"

"St. Sebastian's pincushion, hear him ravel" chuckled Sowter. "Yet his

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 4J3 ]

name is writ on the indenture for all to see: 'tis John McEvoy, plain as day,
from Puddledock in London/'

Ebenezer clutched a piling for support. " Tis my delirium!"

"Aye, St. Pernel's ague, thou'rt not thyself/' the lawyer admitted, mis-
understanding his guest's alarm.

*Te know full well I'm not McEvoy!" shouted the man in the boat.
"McEvoy was the wretch that duped mel"

Focusing his eyes on the sloop, Ebenezer saw the complainant shackled
by one wrist to the gunwale. His hair was red, as was his beard,, but even
through the swimming eyes of fever Ebenezer saw that he was not the
John McEvoy he had feared. He was too old, for one thing— in his forties,
at the least— and too fat: a veritable mountain of flesh,, twice the size of
fat Ben Oliver, he was quite the most corpulent human the poet had ever
beheld.

"That is not John McEvoy," he declared, as Sowter helped him into the
sloop.

"There, now, ye blackguard!" the prisoner cried. "E'en this skinny
wretch admits it, that ye doubtless bribed to swear me false! Thou'rt hoist
with your own petard!" He turned imploringly to Ebenezer. " Tis a double
injury I've been done, sir: this Sowter knows full well I'm not McEvoy,
but he got the papers cheap and means to cany out the fraud!"

"Tush," Sowter answered, and bade his crewmen, of whom there were
two, get the sloop under way. "I'm going below to draw up certain papers,"
he said to Ebenezer. "Ye may take your ease in the cabin till we raise
Cooke's Point."

"I beg ye hear me out," the servant pleaded. 'Te said already ye know
I'm not McEvoy: haply ye'll believe this is unjust."

"'Tis no rare name/' Ebenezer murmured, moving toward the cabin.
"I'll own the John McEvoy I once knew had your red hair, but he was
slight and all befreckled, and a younger man than I."

"That is the one! I'Christ, Sowter, can ye go on now with your monstrous
trick? This wight hath drawn the very likeness of the man that sold me!"

"By David's leek, man," Sowter said testily. "Ye may file complaint at
court the day thou'rt settled on Cooke's Point, for all o' me. Till then thou'rt
John McEvoy, and I've bought your papers honestly. Tell Mr. Cooke your
troubles, if he cares to hear 'em."

With that he went below, followed by the prisoner's curses, but Ebenezer,
at the first heel of the vessel, felt more ill than at any other time in his life

[454] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

except aboard the Poseidon, in the storm off the Canary Islands, and was
obliged to remain in misery at the leeward rail.

"This McEvoy," he managed to say between emergencies. " Tis quite
impossible he's the one I know, for mine's in London."

"E'en so was mine, till six weeks past," the fat man said.

"But mine's no servant seller!"

"No more was mine, till late last night: 'tis I that sells redemptioners for
my living, but this accursed young Irishman did me in, with Sowter's aid!"

Ebenezer shook his head. " Tis unthinkable!" Yet he knew, or believed,
that Joan Toast had come to Maryland— for reasons he could only vaguely
guess at— and also that at the time of his own departure from London,
John McEvoy had had no word of his mistress for some days. "Would God
my head were clear, so I might think on't, what it means!"

The prisoner interpreted this as an invitation to tell his tale, and so
commenced:

"My name is not McEvoy, but Thomas Tayloe, out of Oxford in Talbot
County. Every planter in Talbot knows me "

"Why do you not complain in court, then," the poet interrupted thickly,
"and call them in as witnesses?" He was seated on the deck, too ill to stand.

"Not with Sowter as defendant," Tayloe said. "For all his sainting he is
crooked as the courts, and besides, the wretches would lie to spite me." He
explained that his trade was selling redemptioners: poor folk in England
desirous of traveling to the colonies would, in lieu of boat fare, indenture
themselves to an enterprising sea captain, who in turn "redeemed" their
indentures to the highest bidders in port— a lucrative speculation, since
standard passenger fare for servants was only five pounds sterling, more or
less, and the indenture-bonds of artisans, unmarried women, and healthy
laborers could be sold for three to five times that amount. Those whom it
was inconvenient or insufficiently profitable for the captain to sell directly
he "wholesaled" to factors like Tayloe, who would then attempt to resell
the hands to planters more removed from the port of call. Tayloe's own
specialty, it seemed, was purchasing at an unusually low price servants who
were old, infirm, unskilled, troublesome, or otherwise especially difficult for
the captain to dispose of, and endeavoring to "retail" them before the ex-
pense of feeding them much raised his small investment.

" 'Tis a thankless job," he admitted. " Were't not for me those pinchpenny
planters with their fifty-acre patches would have no hands at all, yet they'll
pay six pounds for a palsied old scarecrow and hold me to account for't he
is no Samson. And the wretched redemptioners claim I starve 'em, when

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 455 1

they know full well I've saved their worthless lives: they're the scum o' the
London docks, the half of 'em, and were spirited away drunk by the captain;
if I didn't take them off his hands in Oxford^ he'd sign 'em on as crewmen
for the voyage home, and see to't they fell to the fishes ere the ship was
three days out."

" Tis a charitable trade you practice, I'm persuaded," Ebenezer said in
a dolorous voice.

"Well, sir," he declared, "just yesterday the Morphides moored off
Oxford with a troop o' redemptioners "

"The Morphides! Not Slye and Scurry's ship?"

"No other," Tayloe said. "Gerrard Slye's the grandest speculator in the
trade, and Scurry is his equal. They are the only order-captains in the
Province. Suppose thou'rt a planter, now, and need you a stonemason for
four years' work: ye put your order in with Slye and Scurry, and on the
next voyage there's your mason."

"No more: I grasp the principle!"

"Well then, 'twas yesterday the Morphides moored, and out we all went
to bid for redemptioners. They were fetching 'em up as I boarded, and the
crew was passing pots o' rum for us buyers. When they brought this red-
haired wight on deck he took one look at the shore, broke away from the
deckhands, and sprang o'er the side ere any man could stop him. Twas his
ill luck to light beside the Morphides' s own boat; the mate and three others
hauled him back aboard and clapped him into leg irons with promise of a
flogging, and I knew then I'd have him ere the day was out."

"Poor McEvoy!" mumbled the Laureate. "I'd not have wished him such,
ill treatment."

"Twas his own doing," Tayloe said. "Would God they'd let the
whoreson drown, so I'd not be shackled here in his place!" He sniffed and
spat over the gunwale. "In any case, the captains filled their orders for
bricklayers, cobblers, boatwrights, and the like, and put up for bids a clutch
o' cabinetmakers and carpenters, and a sailmaker that fetched 'em twenty-
three pounds sterling. As a rule they'd have peddled off the lassies after that,
but in this lot the only ladies were a brace o' forty-year spinsters out to
catch husbands, so instead they brought their field hands out, and bid 'em
off for twelve to sixteen pound. After the field hands came the ladies, and
went for cooks at fourteen pounds apiece. When they were sold,, only four
souls remained, besides the red-head: three were too feeble for field work
and too stupid for anything else, and the fourth was so ravaged with the
smallpox, the look of him would retch a goat. Twas a lean day, for 'tis my

[456] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

wont to buy a dozen or more, but I dickered with Slye and Scurry till at
kst I got the five for twenty pounds—that's a pound a head less than
'twould've cost to bring 'em over if they'd eaten twice a day, but Slye and
Scurry had so starved 'em they were fit for naught but scarecrows, and had
some profit e'en at twenty pound.

'They took the red-head's leg irons off and bade him go peaceably with
me or take his cat-o'-nine-tails on the spot. By the time I got the five of
them ashore, roped round the ankles, and loaded into the wagon, 'twas late
in tie afternoon, and I knew 'twould be great good fortune to sell even
one by nightfall. Twas my plan to stop at the Oxford tavern first, to try if
I could sell to a drunkard what he'd ne'er buy sober, and thence move on
with the worst o' the lot to Dorset, inasmuch as servant-ships rarely land
there, and the planters oft are short o' help. The Irishman set up a hollow-
ing for food, whereat I smote him one across the chops, but for fear they'd
band together and turn on me, I said 'twas to fetch 'em a meal I stopped at
the tavern and they'd eat directly I'd done seeking masters for 'em. Inside
I found two gentlemen in their cups, each boasting to the company of his
wealth, and seized the chance to argue my merchandise. So well did I
feed their vanity, each was eager to show how lightly he bought servants;
and I was careful to bring their audience out as well, for else they'd ne'er
make good their boasts. The upshot of it was, when Mr. Preen bought the
pox-ridden lout, Mr. Puff needs buy two of the ancient dotards to save face.
What's more, they durst not bat an eye at the Jew-man's price I charged,
though I'll wager it sobered the twain of 'em on the instant!

"I hurried off then with the other two, ere my gentlemen had breath to
regret their folly, and steered my course for Cambridge. McEvoy hollowed
louder than before, that I'd not fed him: even Slye and Scurry* he declared,
had given him bread and water on occasion— albeit the biscuit was weevfly
and the water not fit for the arrantest heretic— and did I mean to be the
death of him? Another smite I smote him, this time with the horsewhip, and
told him if I'd not saved him he had been eaten instead of eating. I de-
spaired o' selling either that same night, inasmuch as McEvoy, albeit he
was young and passing sturdy, was so plain a troublemaker that no planter
in his senses would give a shilling for him, and his companion was a crook-
backed little Yorkshireman with a sort of quinsy and no teeth in his head,
who looked as if he'd die ere the spring crop was up; but at the Choptank
feny landing I had another stroke o' luck. 'Twas after dark, and the ferry
was out, so I took my prizes from the wagon and led 'em a small ways
down the beach, towards Bolingbroke Creek, where we could do whate'er

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

we needed ere we crossed. We'd gone no more than forty yards ere I heard
a small commotion just ahead, behind a fallen tree, and when I looked to
see the cause of t, I found Judge Hammaker o' the Cambridge court— nor
was he there for so idle a purpose as ours, but was playing the two-backed
beast with a wench on the sand! He feigned a mighty rage at being dis-
covered, and ordered us away, but once I saw who he was and called him
by name, and asked after his wife's health, he grew more reasonable. In
sooth, 'twas not long ere he confessed he was in great need of a servant,
and though his leanings were toward McEvoy, I persuaded him to take
the Yorkshireman instead. Nay, more, when he agreed that one old servant
is worth two young, I charged him twenty-four pounds for Mr. Crookback
—near twice the price of an average sturdy field hand. E'en so he got off
lightly: the wench he'd been a-swivinghad seemed no stranger to me, albeit
the darkness and her circumstances had kept me from placing her; but
once I'd crossed to Cambridge with McEvoy and heard o' the day's court
cases from the drinkers at the inn, it struck me where I'd seen the tart before.
She was Ellie Salter, whose husband hath a tavern in Talbot County— the
same John Salter who'd got a change of venue to the Cambridge court in
his suit with Justice Bradnox, and had won a judgment from old Hamniaker
that very afternoonl I scarce need tell ye, had I learnt that tale in time 'tis
two new servants he'd have bought, and paid a swingeing sixty pounds
sterling for the pair!

"Yet I'd done a good day's work, at that; I'd sold four worthless flitches
that same evening, where I'd hoped to sell one at most, and had above
fifteen hundredweight o' sot-weed for 'em, or sixty-three pounds sterling,
forty-seven whereof was profit free and clear. Twas cause for celebration,
so I thought, and though I meant still to try amongst the drinkers to find a
buyer for McEvoy, I drank a deal more rum than is my wont and made me
a trip upstairs to one o' Mary Mungurnmory's girls."

"I knew I'd seen your face before," said Ebenezer. "I am Eben Cooke
of Cooke's Point, the same that gave his estate away at yesterday's court. I
too drank much last night: the rum was at the good fellows' expense, but
tjie sport* I fear, at mine."

"I place ye now!" cried Tayloe. "Twas the change of dress misled me"

Ebenezer told as briefly as he could— for he found it ever more difficult
to speak plainly and coherently— how he had been robbed of his clothing
in the corncrib and rescued by Mary Mungummory herself; and without
going into any detail about McEvoy's responsibility for his presence in the

[ 45$ 1 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Province, he marveled at the coincidence of the Irishman's proximity
throughout the evening.

"Marry/' said Tayloe, " 'twould not surprise me to learn 'twas he that
stole your clothes, he's that treacherous! Here I had saved him from Scurry
and Slye, and was at the expense of carting him from place to place to find
him a master, but no sooner do I close my eyes than he turns on me and
plays me such a trick 'twill be a wonder if I'm e'er my own man againl
Out from the tavern I came, so full o' rum I scarce could walk. There was
no room at the inn, so just as you made shift in the corncrib, so I climbed
up on the wagon with McEvoy to sleep out the balance of the night, and
ere I pulled the blanket over me, that I carried for such occasions, I fetched
out my knife and threatened him with it, to carve him into soup-beef if he
kid a hand on me. Then I went to sleep, nor knew another thing till dawn
this morning, when I woke as Sowter's servant!"
"Dear God! How did that happen?"

Tayloe growled and shook his head. "The rum was at the root oft," he
declared. "My error was to lay the knife down by my head, against his
leaping me, and I was too drunken to lay it out of his reach. I had him
hog-tied, but in some wise he wriggled over without waking me— the
cursed rum again, that makes a man sleep like a turtle in the mud!— and
cut himself free with the knife. Tis a marvel and astonishment he didn't
murther me outright, and belike if I'd so much as fired a fart 'twould've
been my end. But I slept like a whelp in the womb, and in lieu of killing
me, Mr. McEvoy picks me clean. Out comes my sixty-three pounds— the
most, thank Heav'n, in sot-weed bills that he dare not try to exchange in
Talbot or Dorset, but five or six pounds in coin o' the realm— and then
out comes the happiest prize of all: my half o' the wretched red-head's
indenture-bond! Armed with these, from what I gather, he strides bold as
brass into the tavern, bribes him a meal despite the hour, and rousts up
Mary Mungummory's girls for a go-round, spending my silver with both
his hands. Then at dawn, whilst I'm still dead asleep o' the rum, he crosses
paths with Sowter, that is known the length and breadth o' Maryland for a
rogue and swindler, and there's the end o' me! Had he struck his foul
bargain with any soul else, he'd have got no farther than the calling of his
name; but Sowter, though he knows me well for all his feigning, would
swear for a shilling that King William was the Pope. Either McEvoy called
himself Tom Tayloe, and Sowter pretended to believe him, or else 'twas
Sowter's doing from the start; in any case they made me out to be McEvoy,
and for two pounds sterling Sowter bought the indenture-bond. The first I

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 459 ]

knew oft was when his bullies came to fetch me— the same ye see there at
the helm and sheets— and led me off on the end of a rope and shackled me
here to the gunwale. I'm indented to four years' labor for the master o'
Maiden, that I hear is Sowter's crony, and the real McEvoy, that hid out
o' sight till I was led off,, hath doubtless flown the coop with my cart and
horse. Nor can I carry my complaint to court, for the bond says of McEvoy
only that he hath red hair and beard and is slight of build: my master will
argue my size is proof o' his care for me. What's more 'tis Sowter I must
sue, that is an eel to catch in a court o' law, and for every friend who'd
swear I am Tom Tayloe, he'd find three ingrates that will vow I'm John
McEvoy. Yet e'en if these things were not so, my case would still be heard
in the court at Cambridge, and on the bench would be Judge Hammaker
himself! In short, I go to Maiden in straits as sorry as yours— swived by
Richard Sowter from bight to bitter end!"

Ebenezer sighed commiseratively. " Tis a sorry tale in truth/' he said,
though in fact he rather sympathized with McEvoy and more than a little
suspected that the redemption-dealer had got his due. "Yet withal thou'rt
something better cased than I, who have nor food to eat nor bed to sleep
in, neither comfort in the past, satisfaction in the present, nor hope in the

future " He was seized with another fit of seasickness, after which he

clung weakly to the gunwale. "I have not even health enough to bewail
my lot."

"Nor time, by Crispin's last," said Richard Sowter, who had emerged
from the sloop's cabin in time to hear this last remark, "for yonder off to
larboard is Castlehaven Point, and two points farther down is Cooke's."

Ebenezer groaned. "What joyous tidings those should be! And yet 'tis
like a knell of death, for de'il the bit I want to see my home, 'tis mine no
more, and once I've seen it my life is done. Belike I shan't even go ashore,
but end my misery in the Great Choptank."

"Oh la," said Sowter, "there's always some expedient. Ye may at least
console yourself 'twas not rum, wrongheadedness, or the rage o' the mob
that brought ye low, but simple pride and innocence, such as have ruined
many a noble wight before. See that house yonder in the poplars?"

The sloop had cleared Castlehaven Point and was now laid over on a
starboard tack due westward into a fresh breeze blowing from the Bay.
Ashore off the larboard beam had appeared a large white clapboard manor.

"Not Maiden so soon!" cried the poet.

"Nay, St. Clement's anchor, 'tis Castlehaven, and where it stands once
stood a very castle of a manor-house called Edouardine, that was built to

[460] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

last till the end o' time. There is a tale o' costly pride, if the truth of it were
known."

Ebenezer remembered the story of the young woman whom his father
had rescued from drowning and who had served as wet nurse for himself
and Anna until Andrew's return to England. "Methinks I have heard the
name/' he said gloomily. "I've not fortitude enough to hear the tale."

"Nor have I time to tell it/' Sowter replied. He pointed to a wooded
spit of land some five or six miles to westward, across the huge expanse of
the river's mouth. "There lies Cooke's Point ahead, where the Choptank
meets the Chesapeake. Ye'll see Maiden in a minute, when we're closer."

"God damn your lying soul, Dick Sowter!" cried Tom Tayloe. "Will ye
cany this fraud so far?"

Sowter smiled as if surprised. "St. Cuthbert's beads, sir, I know not what
fraud ye speak of. Pardon me whilst I get my papers ready for Mr. Smith."

When he had gone again into the cabin, Tayloe clutched at Ebenezer's
deerskin shirt. "Thou'rt ill, are ye not, and want nursing back to health?"

"That Fm ill is clear/' Ebenezer answered. "But what need hath a ruined
man of health? I mean to have one look at Maiden and end my life."

"Nay, man, that were foolish! Ye have been swived out o' your rightful
place, as I have been, but thou'rt not disliked amongst the public and the
courts. Smith and Sowter have undone ye for the present, yet it wants but
time, methinks, and careful thought, to have your manor back."

Ebenezer shook his head. "That is vain hope, and cruel to entertain."

"Not at all!" Tayloe insisted. "There is the Governor to appeal to, and
belike thy father hath some influence in court. With time enough, and
patience, thou'rt sure to find some trick. Why, I'll wager ye have not even

seen a barrister yet, that might match old Sowter's craft with craft of his

_____ »>

own.

Ebenezer admitted that he had not. "Yet 'tis a lost cause after all," he
sighed. "I've not a penny to subsist on, nor any friend to borrow from,
and scarce can walk for fever."

'That is my point exactly," Tayloe said. "Ye know I'm not McEvoy,
and have been falsely bonded for a servant, and I've shown ye how hopeless
is my case. Once I set foot on Cooke's Point I lose four years o' my life-
nay, more; 'twill be no chore for Sowtjer to have the term drawn out on
some pretext, since he knows Judge Hammaker will support him."

"Haply 'tis my illness," said Ebenezer. "I fail to see what connec-
tion "

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 461 ]

"If this Smith signs my indenture-bond, I'm lost," Tayloe said desper-
ately. "But if 'twere you he bonded . . ."

"I!"

"Pray hear me out!" the fat man pleaded. " 'Twould be the answer to
both our problems if you served in my stead. I would be free o' Sowter's
clutches, and 'tis the master's obligation to feed, clothe, and house his serv-
ants, and nurse 'em when they're ill."

Ebenezer screwed up his features as if to aid him in assimilating the
idea. "But to be a servant on my own estatel"

"So much the better. Ye can keep your eyes open for ways to get your
due. And once I'm free, d'ye think I'll e'er forget your kindness? I'll move
Heav'n and earth in your behalf; notify your father "

"Nay, not that!" Ebenezer blanched at the thought.

"Governor Nicholson, then," Tayloe amended hastily. "I'll petition
Nicholson himself, and rouse the folk in Dorset to your cause! They'll ne'er
sit idly whilst their Laureate leads a servant's life!"

"But four years a menial "

"Fogh! 'Twill never last four weeks, once I set to work. 'Tis the master
o' Maiden ye'll be indented to, not Smith himself, and as soon as Maiden's
in your hands again, ye may use your bond for a bumswipe."

Ebenezer laughed uneasily. "I cannot say your plan hath not some
merits "

" 'Twill save your life, and mine as well!"

"—and yet I scarce can fancy Sowter's hearing you out, much less
agreeing."

"There is the key to't!" Tayloe whispered urgently, and drew the Laureate
closer. "If I make the plea he will suspect some plot and haply turn me
down from mere suspicion. Twere wiser you make the plea— and not to
Sowter, but to Smith, who hath no reason to be my enemy. One servant
should be as good as another to him."

"Yet if 'twere I," Ebenezer mused, recalling again the story of his wet
nurse, "I'd be more inclined to hire a healthy servant than an ill."

"Not if the ill is willing," Tayloe corrected, "whilst the healthy shows
every sign o' making trouble. Make your bargain with Smith, as if 'twere
but your motive to regain your health and redress the great injustice of
my case."

Ebenezer smiled bitterly. "He knows me already for a man most inter-
ested in justice! And belike 'twill please him to have his erstwhile master for
a common servant . . ."

[462] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Tayloe made as if to embrace him. "Bless ye, sir! Yell do't, then?"

Ebenezer drew back. "I've not consented, mind. But 'tis that or suicide,
and so it deserves some thought."

Unable to do more, Tayloe caught his hand and kissed it. " 'Sheart, sir,
thou'rt a saint indeed: a very Christian saint!"

"Which is to say, fit meat for martyring," the Laureate answered, "a mor-
sel for the wide world's lions."

The reappearance of Sowter on deck ended their conversation. "Say
what ye will," he declared, not clearly apropos of anything, "'twas a pass-
ing fine property to lose, by Martin's rum pot, and were I in thy shoes I'd
do all in my power to retrieve it— e'en if 'twere no more than praying to St.
Elian, the recoverer of lost goods."

As he spoke he was gazing narrow-eyed out to sea, so that for a moment
Ebenezer feared he'd overheard their plans and was hatching some retalia-
tion. But then he said, "Lookee yonder, lad," and with a sheaf of rolled-up
documents pointed westward in the direction of his gaze. Though still some
two or three miles from shore, the sloop had beaten close enough on its
starboard tack so that individual trees could be distinguished—maples and
oaks on the higher ground and loblolly pines near the beach— and a boat
dock could be seen extending toward them from a lawn of grass that ran
back to a white wooden house of gracious design and ample dimensions,
not greatly different in appearance from the house at Castlehaven.

"Is there a tale to that one too?" Ebenezer asked without interest.

"St. Veronica's sacred snot-rag, boy, thou'rt a better judge than I," the
lawyer laughed, "'Tis Maiden."

31: THE LAUREATE ATTAINS HUSBANDHOOD AT NO
EXPENSE WHATEVER OF HIS INNOCENCE

AS SOWTER'S SLOOP DREW NEARER TO THE SHORE, THE ESTATE BECAME
visible in more detail, and Ebenezer gazed at it with an ever queasier
stomach. The house, to be sure, was somewhat smaller than he had antici-
pated, and of perishable white-painted clapboards rather than the fieldstone
one might wish for; the grounds, too, evidenced little attention to artful
landscaping on the part of his father and indifferent care on the part of the
residents. But viewed through the triple lenses of fever, loss, and earliest

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 463 ]

childhood memories, the place took on a noble aspect indeed: Ebenezer's
fancy replaced a cracked pane here, mended a clapboard there, fitted new
shingles, applied fresh paint, rearranged the shrubbery, trimmed the grass,
and generally invested house and grounds with everything they lacked.

His first thought, oddly, was of his sister Anna. "Dear Heav'n!" he
reflected, and tears made his vision swim. "I have let our ancient home slip
through my fingers! God curse such innocence!"

This last ejaculation reminded him of Andrew, and though he shuddered
at the thought of his father's wrath when the news reached England, he
could not help almost wishing that that rage and punishment (which surely
would amount to total disinheritance and disownment) were upon him,
so more miserable and unconsoling was his present self-contempt. Tayloe's
startling proposal was rendered more attractive by this notion: not only
would it provide him with the subsistence and medical care he obviously
needed and a chance, however slim, of regaining the estate; indenturing
himself to the "master of Maiden" would also be a punishment— indeed,
to his essentially poetic and currently feverish fancy, even a kind of
atonement— for his misdeeds. His innocence had cost him his estate;
very well, then, he would be the servant of his innocence— and perhaps,
even, as the term redemptioner nicely implied,, expiate thereby his folly by
undoing the cooper William Smith. There was even more to the allegory
than this, he felt, but when he tried to follow it farther it only became
tangled and contradictory. He grew dizzy and abandoned the attempt:
Burlingame, no doubt, could make the whole conceit appear ridiculous if
he knew of it, and in any case the most immediately important considera-
tion was the prosaic one of recovering from the ill effects of his "seasoning."

When the sloop made fast to the dock, Sowter left Tayloe shackled to
the gunwale against the completion of arrangements for his transfer to
Smith, and invited Ebenezer to accompany him up to the house.

" Tis not for me to say how welcome yell be, but at the least ye may
enquire about your servant and your lady friend, and have a look about."

"Aye, and I must see Smith as well," the Laureate said weakly. "I have
a thing to say to him."

"Ah, well, we have some business to attend toy he and I, but after that

Lookee, by Goodman's needle! There he comes to greet us. Hallo, there!"

The cooper waved back from the doorway of the house and walked down
the lawn in their direction, accompanied by a woman in a Scotch-cloth
gown.

"rtaith!" Ebenezer exclaimed. "Is that the trollop Susan Wairen?"

[464] ' THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Mr. Smith's daughter/' Sowter reminded him.

As they drew nearer, Susan regarded the Laureate intently; Ebenezer,
for his part, was filled with anger and shame, and avoided her eyes.

"Well, well," Smith cried, "'tis Mister Cooke! I did not know ye at first
in your new clothes, sir, but thou'rt welcome to Maiden for certain and
must stay to dinner!"

"Methinks he's ill," Susan said with some concern.

"I am sick unto death," Ebenezer said, and could say no more; he
swayed dizzily on his feet, and was obliged to catch Sowter s arm to keep
from falling.

"Take him inside," Smith ordered Susan. "Haply Doctor Sowter can
give him a pill when we've done our business."

The girl obediently and to the Laureate's embarrassment put his arm
across her shoulders and led him toward the house. Except that she seemed
to have washed, she was as ragged and unkempt now as when he had first
seen her driving Captain Mitchell's swine, and even the brief glimpse of
her that his shame permitted was enough to show that her face and neck
were even more disfigured than before by marks and welts.

"Where is Joan Toast?" he asked, as soon as he was able. "Hath your
wretch of a father mistreated her?"

"She never did arrive," Susan answered shortly. "Belike she misdoubted
your intentions: a whore hath little grounds for faith in men."

"And a man for faith in whores! I swear you this, Susan Warren: if you
have been party to any injury to that girl, you'll suffer for't!" He wanted to
press her further, especially with reference to the discrepancy between her
story and that of Burlingame, who had not seen or heard of Joan Toast's
presence in the Province, but aside from his weakness there were two un-
pleasant considerations that kept him from pursuing the subject: in the
first place, Joan might well have learned that the man she sought was sud-
denly a pauper and thus, in her eyes, no longer worth seeking; in the second
place, and perhaps additionally, she might have got word of McEvoy's hav-
ing followed her to Maryland, and gone to join him instead. Therefore,
when Susan assured him that if any injury had befallen Joan Toast it was
not at her, Susan's, hands, he contented himself with asking after Bertrand,
whom Burlingame had dispatched to St. Mary's City to retrieve the
Laureate's baggage.

"The trunk ye sent him to fetch is here," the girl replied. " Twas sent
over by the packet from St. Mary's. But of the man I've seen no trace, nor
heard a word."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 465 ]

"Whom Fortune buffets, the -whole -world beats" sighed Ebenezer. " Tis
best for both if the/ve found new ground to graze, for I've naught to keep
wife or servant on any more. But withal, their lack of loyalty wounds me
to the quick!"

They entered the house, and though the interior showed the same need
of attention as the outside, the rooms were spacious and adequately fur-
nished, and the Laureate wept to see them.

"How like a paradise Maiden seems to me, now I've lost it!" He found it
necessary to sit down, but when Susan made to assist him he waved her
away angrily. "Why feign solicitude to a sick and feckless pauper? I doubt
not you've made peace with your father, now he's a gentleman planter-
get thee gone and play the great lady on my estate! What, you have a tear
for me, do you? When all's consum'd, repentance comes too late"

Susan dabbed immodestly at her eyes with the hem of her threadbare
dress. "Thou'rt not the only person injured by your day in court/'

"Ha! Your father birched you, did he, for taking the stand against him?
'Tis no more than such lewd lies deserve, whether 'twas he or I you lied to."

Susan shook her head sadly. "Things are not as they seem, Mister
Cooke "

"I'God!" Ebenezer clasped his head. "The old refrain! My estate and
Anna's dowry is lost, my best friend hath betrayed me and left me to starve,
the woman I love hath either met foul play or scorned me for a pauper, I
am as good as disowned by my father and near dead of the seasoning, and
in my final hours on earth I must abide the wisdom of a thankless strumpet!
Tis too much!"

"Haply ye'll understand one day," Susan said. "I have no wish to do ye
farther hurt than ye've done yourself already!"

With this remark, for all the coarseness of her aspect, Susan fled weeping
from the room.

"Nay, wait!" the Laureate begged, and despite his illness he set out after
her to apologize for his unkind words. He was, however, unable to move
with any haste or efficiency, and soon lost her. He wandered through a
number of empty rooms, uncertain of his objective, until at last he found
himself in what appeared to be the kitchen. Three women, all in the dress
of servants, were playing a game of cards around a table; they regarded
him uncordially.

"I beg your pardon, ladies," he said, leaning against the doorframe; "I
am looking for Mrs. Susan Warren."

"Then thou'rt seeking an early grave," the dealer quipped, and the

[466] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

others laughed merrily. "Get along with ye, now; 'tis too early in the day
to bother Susie or any o' the rest of us."

"Forgive me," Ebenezer said hastily. "I had no mind to intrude upon
your game."

" Tis but a simple hand of lanterloo," said the woman with the cards.

"Simple to misdeal!" cried another, who spoke with a French accent.
"What is it that you do? Cheat me?"

"Ye dare call me a cheat!" the first replied. "Thou'rt something brave
for one not a fortnight loose o' your serving-papers!"

"Hold thy tongue, boite seche!" growled the French woman. "I know
Captain Scurry swived you for your freight, what time he fetched you off
the streets and shipped you hither!"

"No more than Slye did you," cried the dealer, "though God alone
knows why a man would swive a sow! And if he found me in St. Paul's,
'twas from Bridewell he fished the likes o' you, or the stinking stews o'
Paris!"

"I beg your pardon," Ebenezer interrupted. "If you are servants of the
house - "

"Non, certainement, I am no servant!"

"The truth is," said the dealer, "Grace here's a hooker."

"A what?" asked the poet.

^A hooker," the woman repeated with a wink. "A quail, don't ye know."

"A quail!" the woman named Grace shrieked. "You call me a quail, you
—you gaullefretierer

"Whore!" shouted the first.

^Eas-cuir retorted the other.

"Frisker!"

"Consoeurr

"Trull!"

"Friquenellel"

"Sow!"

"Bawd!"

"Strawgirl!"
"Seraner
"Tumbler!"
"Poupinettel"

"Mattressback!

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [467]

"Brimballeuse!"

"Nannygoat!"

"Chouettel"

"Windowgirl!"

"Wauve!"

"Lowgap!"

"Peaultre!"

"GalleywenchT

"Baque!"

"Drab!"

"Villotitre!"

"Fastfanny!"

"Gaure!"

"Ringer!"

"Bringue/"

"Capercock!"

"Ancette!"

"Nellie!"

"Gdl&el"

"Chubcheeker!"

"Ctevre/"

"Nightbird!"

"Rawhide!"

"Cezprc!"

"Shortheels!"

"PaiUardet"

"Bumbessie!"

"Image!"

"Furrowbutt!"

"Voyagere!"

"Pinkpot!"

"Femme de vie!"

"Rum-and-rut!"

"Fellatrice!"

"Ladies! Ladies!" the Laureate cried, but by this time the cardplayers,
including the two disputants, were possessed with mirth, and paid him no
heed.

"Coxswain!" shouted the one whose turn it was to play.

£ A.6S ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Trottterel" Grace replied.

"Conycatcher!"

"GoiLTgftndineF*

"Tart!"

"CoquatriceF

"Fluter!"

"Cockeye!"

"Pelerinel"

"Crane!"

"DrdlLessel"

"Trotter!"

"PeUicel"

"Fleecer!"

"Fatback!"

"Nightbagl"

"Reveleusel"

"Vagrant!"

"Postiqueusel"

"Arsebenderl"

"Tir&us& de vinaigrel"

"Sally-dally!"

"Rigpbettel"

"Bitch!"

"Pr&tresse du membrel"

"Saltflitch!"

"Sfmrditel"

"Canvasback!"

"Redresseuse!"

"Hipflipper!"

"Personni^reJ"

"Hardtonguer!"

"Ribauldel"

"Bedbug!"

"Posoeral"

"Hamhocker!"

"RicdLdexl"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 469 ]

"Bullseye!"

"Sac-de-nuit!"

"Breechdropper!"

"Roussecaignel"

"Giftbox!"

"Scaldrine!"

"Craterbutt!"

"Tendri&re de bouche et reins!"

"Pisspallet!"

"PresentiereF

"Naiycherry!"

"Femme de mal recapte!"

"Poxbox!"

"Tousef

"Flapgap!"

"Codhopper!"

"CourieuseF

"Bellylass!"

"Trollop!"

"Peddlesnatch!"
"FolieuseF
"Backgammon!^
"Gondmef

"Drue!"
"Prickpocket!"

"Dear God in Heav'n, cease!" Ebenezer commanded, so overwhelmed
by their debate that with his hands over his ears he reeled about the room as
if each epithet were a blow to the head.

"Nay, by Christ, 'tis a war to the end!" cried the dealer. "Would ye have
old England surrender to the French? Why, she's naught but a common
meatcooker!"

"And you a jannetonF. the other replied gleefully.

"Arsievarsie!"

"Fillette de pis!"

47° 3 XHK SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Backscratcher!"

"Demoiselle de moraisl"

"BumpbaconI"

"Gaultierel"

"Full-o*-tricks!"

"Ensaignantel"

"Pesthole!"

"Gastr

"Romp!"

"Court talonr

"Pigpokel"

"Folle de corpsf"

"Scabber!"

"Gouiruel"

"Strumpet!"

"Fille d& joiel"

"Gullybum!"

"Droumel"

"Tess Tuppence!"

"Gaupel"

"Slattern!"

"Entaitte d'amourl"

"Doxy!"

"Accrocheusel"

"Chippie!"

"CZozsrridreJ"

"Puddletrotter!"

"Hetaera!"

"Caignardierel"

"Pipecleaner!"

"Rumper!"

"Hotpot!"

"Alicaire!"

"Backbender!"

"Champissel"

"Sink-o'-perdirion!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 471 1

"Cantonnierel"

"Leasepiece!"

"Ambubaye!"

"Spreadeagle!"

"Bassara!"

"Gutterflopper!"

"Bezoche!"

"Cockatrice!"

"Caille!"

"Sausage-grinded"

"Bourbeteuse!"

"Cornergirl!"

"Braydonel"

"Codwinkerl"

"Bonsoirt"

"Charlotte Harlot!"

"Bltmchisseuse des pipes!"

"Nutcracker!"

"Balances de boucherl"

"Meat-vendor!"

"Femme de pech6l"

"Hedgewhore!"

"Lecheresse!"

"Ventrenter!"

"Lightheels!"

"Pantonierer

"Gadder!"

"Grue!"

"Ragbag!"

"Musequinel"

"Fleshpotl"

"Louve!"

"Lecheress!"

"Martingdel"

"Tollhole!"

"Harrebane!"

"Pillowgut!"

"Marane!"

[AJ2] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Chamberpot!"

"Levriere d'amour!"

"Swilltrough!"

"Pannanessel"

"Potlicker!"

"Linatte coiffeel"

"Bedpan!"

"Hourieuse!"

"Cotwarmer!"

"MocUl"

"Stumpthumper!"

"Maxima!"

"Messalina!"

"Louditre!"

"Slopjar!"

"Mana-fle!"

'Hussy!"

"Lesbinef9

"Priest-layer!"

"Horel"

"Harpy!"

"MandraunaF

"Diddled"

"Foul-mouthed harridans!" Ebenezer cried, and fled through the first
door he encountered. It led him by a shorter route back to his starting
place, where William Smith now sat alone, smoking a pipe by the fire. "To
what evil state hath Maiden sunk, to house such a circle of harpies! When
Captain Mitchell called it a den of thieves and whores, who knew 'twas the
literal truth he spoke?"

Smith shook his head sympathetically. "Things are in a sorry pass, thanks
to Ben Spurdance. 'Twill take some doing to put my business in order."

"Thy business! Don't you see my plight, man? I am ruined, a pauper,
and ill to the death of fever. 'Twas mere mischance I granted you Cooke's
Point: a sorry accident made with every generous intent! Let me give you
twenty acres—that's your due. Nay, thirty acres— after all, I saved your
skin! Now return me Maiden, I pray you humbly, and so save mine!"

"Stay, stay/' Smith interrupted. "Ye'll not have back your Maiden, and
there's an end on't. What, shall I make me a poor man again, from a rich?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 473 ]

"Forty acres, then!" begged Ebenezer. "Take twice your legal due, or
'tis the river for me!"

"The entire point's my legal due: our conveyance says so plainly."

Ebenezer slumped back in his chair. "Ah God, were I only well, or could
I take this swindle to an English court of law!"

"Ye'd get the selfsame answer," Smith retorted. "I beg your pardon, now,
friend Cooke; I must inspect a man Dick Sowter hath indented me." He
made to leave through the front entrance.

"Wait!" the Laureate cried. "That man was falsely indentured—betrayed,
like myself, by's trust in his fellow man! His name is not McEvoy at all, but
Thomas Tayloe of Talbot!"

Smith shrugged. "I care not if he calls himself the Pope o' Rome, so he
hath a willing back and a small appetite."

"He hath not either," Ebenezer declared, and very briefly explained the
circumstances of Tayloe's indenture.

"If what ye say be true, 'tis a great misfortune," Smith allowed. "Howbeit,
'tis his to moan, not mine. And now excuse me "

"One moment!" Ebenezer managed to walk across the room to face the
cooper. "If you will not do justice at your own expense, haply you'll see fit
to do't at mine. Turn Tayloe free, and bond me in his stead."

"What folly is this?" exclaimed the cooper.

Ebenezer pointed out, as coherently as he could manage, that he was
ill and in need of some days' rest and recuperation, in return wherefor,
and his keep, he would be a willing and ready servant in whatever capacity
Smith saw fit to employ him— especially clerking and the posting of
ledgers, with which he had a good deal of experience. Tayloe, on the other
hand, was not only in truth a freeman; he was also a gluttonous sluggard
who would surely bear a dangerous, if justifiable resentment towards his
master.

"There is sense in all ye say," mused William Smith. "Yet I can starve a
glutton and flog a troublemaker, at no expense whatever, whilst a sick
man "

"Dear God!" groaned the poet. "Must I beg you to make me a servant on

my own estate? Very well, then " He knelt in supplication on the floor.

"I beseech you to bond me as a servant, for any term you choose! If you
refuse, 'tis as much as murthering me outright!"

Smith sucked at his pipe and, finding it cold, relit it with an ember from
the fire.

£ 474] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"I am nor poet nor gentleman," he said at last, "but only a simple cooper
that hath no wish to lose his goods. Yet I please myself to think I am no
fool, nor any child in the ways o' the world, and I know well thou'rt moved
by no great virtuous cause to be my servant, but merely to be nursed
through your seasoning and then to seek out ways and means to work my
ruin . . ."

"I swear to you "

"Stay, I am not done. Til not indent you, nor do I want ye skulking
about my plantation. But I will see ye well nursed past your seasoning, on
one condition."

"Name your terms," Ebenezer said. "I am sick past haggling." He re-
turned to his chair and closed his eyes.

"The fact is, I am looking to make a fit match for my daughter Susan,
whose husband died some years past in London. If yell contract to wed
her this very night, Til give for her dowry a half-year's board at Maiden,
with all the care ye need from Dick Sowter, the best physician in Dorset. If
ye choose to wed her tomorrow, 'twill be five months' board, and a month
less for each day thereafter. Done?"

" 'Sheart, man!" gasped the Laureate^ 'What a torrent of grand proposals
and designs! Tis preposterous!"

Smith bowed slightly. "Our business is done, then, and good day t'ye."

"Don't go! Tis just— i'God, I must have time to ponder the thing!"

"Surely," the cooper smiled. "Take the while I finish this pipe. After
that I withdraw my offer."

"You'll drive me mad with choices!" Ebenezer wailed, but as Smith made
no reply other than puffing on his pipe, he began to weigh frantically the
alternatives of marriage and death, wincing at either prospect.

"What is your choice?" Smith inquired presently, tapping out his pipe
on an andiron.

"I have none," Ebenezer sighed. "I shall marry your ruined harlot of a
daughter to save my life, and God save me from her pox and her perfidy!
But I must see your bargain writ into a contract, and both our names
appended."

"'Tis only fair," the cooper agreed, and set before the Laureate a small
table on which were quills, a pot of ink, and a sheaf of documents very like
those with which Richard Sowter had pointed out Maiden from the sloop.
"Here are two copies of a marriage contract that I had Dick Sowter draw
against the time I made a match for Susan; I'll risk a fine for not publishing

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 475 1

the banns. Sign both, and the thing is sealed: Reverend Sowter can tie
the knot at once and fetch ye a pill"

"A preacher as well!" Ebenezer marveled, and was so amused in his
near-delirium by this news that he had signed one copy of the contract and
was halfway through the second before it occurred to him to wonder how
it was that Smith could produce, with such readiness, documents not only
contracting the marriage but also providing, on the very terms proposed a
few moments before by the cooper, for the bridegroom's convalescence.
Even as he foised his pen, dumb struck by the plot this fact implied,
Richard Sowter, Susan Warren, and Thomas Tayloe entered from outside,
accompanied by no other soul than Henry Burlingame.

"Stop!" cried Susan, when she saw what was in progress. "Don't sign
that paper!" She ran toward the table, but Smith snatched up the papers
before she got there.

"Too late, my dear, he is three fourths signed already, and 'twill be no
chore for Timothy here to forge the rest."

Ebenezer looked from one to the other, his features twitching. "Henry!
What— what plot is this? Have you returned to steal these Indian rags, or
haply to sport me with more scurrilous rhymes?"

"There was a weakness in your court order, Mister Cooke," said Sowter,
and took one of the several papers from Smith. "Here where't says That
the same William Smith shall see to his daughter's marriage at the earliest
opportunity, and the rest. St. Winifred's cherry, sir! No man in his senses
would marry a whore bend with pox and opium, and belike some rogue
of a judge would' ve hung the court order on that clause!"

"But," added William Smith, brandishing the contract in his hand, "this
paper here quite mends that hole, I think."

"It doth, it doth in truth," Sowter agreed. "Tis a finer clout than e'er
St. Wilfred sewed, I declare!"

"I humbly beg your pardon, Mister Cooke," said Thomas Tayloe. " Twas
Sowter's notion from the first I should ask ye to take my place. He said
'twas the only price he'd tgke for me."

'Thou'rt forgiven," Ebenezer said, smiling wildly. "McEvoy sacrificed
you for his liberty, and you me for your own — whom shall I trade for mine?
But dear fellow, they have swived you twice o'er: thou'rt not a freeman
yet."

"How is that?" Tayloe demanded.

"Twas not necessary to indenture Mr. Cooke," Smith said coolly.
"Susan, you and Timothy fetch out the witnesses from the kitchen and

[476] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

get the bridegroom ready; Reverend Sowter will marry ye directly we've
shown McEvoy to the servant's quarters."

Tayloe at once set up a furious protest, but the two men led him off.
Throughout the conversation Burlingame had remained silent, and his face
had been impassive when Ebenezer had addressed him as Henry instead of
Timothy; as soon as Smith and Sowter were out of sight, however, his man-
ner changed entirely. He rushed to the chair where Ebenezer sat as if
a-swoon and gripped him by the shoulders.

"EbenI Eben! Dear God, wake up and hear me!"

Ebenezer squinted and turned away. "I cannot bear the sight of you."

"Nay, Eben, listen! I've little time to speak ere they return, and must
speak fast: Smith is no common cooper, but an agent of Captain Mitchell's,
that is in turn Coode's chief lieutenant! There is a wondrous wicked plot
afoot to ruin the Province with pox and opium, the better to overthrow it
Great brothels and opium dens have been established, and Maiden's to be
the chiefest in this county. All this I learned by posing as Tim Mitchell,
whose job it is on some pretext to journey through the counties with fresh
stores of opium and to supervise the brothels." Since Ebenezer displayed no
apparent interest or belief, Burlingame went on to explain, in an urgent
voice, that for some time Captain Mitchell had been scheming with Smith
to ruin Ben Spurdance (who had been loyal both to the government and
to his employer) in order to gain access to the strategically situated Cooke's
Point estate. He, Burlingame, on the other hand, had been seeking ways
to subvert their scheme, although it was not until the occasion of Susan's
escape (which was, to be sure, designed by Captain Mitchell) that he had
known for certain the location of the proposed new brothel and the
identity of Mitchell's Dorchester agent.

"And 'twas not till we arrived in Cambridge, and Spurdance sought me
out whilst you were strolling elsewhere, that I learned Susan was not loyal
to the cause she served. They came to me together, in answer to a secret
sign I made whereby our agents know one another, and whilst the Salter
case was a-hearing, they told me they had found a way to undo Smith by
the terms of his indenture, and had influenced Judge Hammaker to their
end. We had the wretch near scotched, by Heav'n, with Susan's testimony
—but your judgment, of course, foiled our plan."

Ebenezer still made no reply, but tears ran from his squinted eyes and
coursed down the great gaunt reaches of his face.

" 'Twas thus I dared show little sympathy for your loss," Henry went on.
4*I befriended Smith at once and left you stranded in the corncrib to keep

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 477]

you out of danger till I'd left with him for Maiden and learnt more of his
plans and temper. I thought he'd beat poor Susan to a powder for betraying
him, but instead he showed her every courtesy; 'twas not till some minutes
past, when Susan told me you were here and I heard from Sowter the tale
of John McEvoy and Tom Tayloe, that I saw the scoundrel's plot, and for
all my haste we arrived too late to stop you."

"It little matters now," the Laureate said, closing his eyes. "I shall not
live to see my father's wrath, in any case/'

"Why can I not refuse to have him?" asked Susan, who throughout
Burlingame's relation had been sitting tearfully on the floor beside Ebene-
zefs writing table. "'Twould foil the contract and greatly please Mr.
Cooke, I'm certain."

Burlingame replied that he doubted the former, since the contract would
demonstrate to the court that Smith had complied with the marriage order
as far as was in his power. "As for the latter, 'tis none of my affair, but I
know no other way to care for Eben just now . . ."

"It doth not matter to me any farther/' said Ebenezer.

"Nay, don't despair!" Burlingame shook him by the shoulders to stir him
awake. " Tis my opinion you should marry Susan, Eben,. and let her nurse
you back to health. I know your thoughts, and how you prize your chastity,
but— i'faith, there is the answer! Thou'rt obliged to wed, but not to con-
summate the marriage; when thou'rt well again, and we have found a means
to undo William Smith, then Susan can sue for annulment on the grounds
thou'rt still a virgin!"

Susan hung her head, but said no more. The voices of Smith and Sowter,
laughing together, could be heard in the rear of the house, joined in a mo-
ment by the raucous voices of the cardplayers in the kitchen.

"Lookee, Eben," Burlingame said quickly. "I have a pill of Sowter's here
in my pocket— he is a physician, for all his knavery. Take it now to tide you
through the wedding, and I swear we'll see you master of this house ere
the year is out!"

Ebenezer shook off his lethargy enough to groan and cover his face with
his hands. "I'Christ, that some god on wires would sweep down and fetch
me off! Tis a far different course I'd follow, could I begin once more at
Locket's winehouse!"

"Look alive, there!" William Smith called cheerily, and strode into the
room with Sowter and the three women. "Stand him up, now, Timothy,
and let's have an end on't!"

[478] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Marry come up," cried one of the prostitutes, running to Susan, "I do
love a wedding!"

"Aussi moi" said Grace, the Parisienne, "but always I weep/' She drew
out her handkerchief in anticipation.

'Tell have to marry him where he sits," Burlingame told Sowter, using
the voice of Timothy Mitchell. "Here, now, Master Bridegroom; chew this
pill and make your answers when the time comes. Stand here by your hus-
band, Susie, and hold his hand."

"'Dslife!" the third prostitute exclaimed with mock alarm. "D'ye think
he's man enough to take her head?"

"Curb your wretched tongue," snapped Susan, "ere I tear it from your
face!" She grasped Ebenezer's hand and glared at the assemblage. "Get
on with it, Richard Sowter, damn your eyes! This man is ill and must be
got to bed at once."

The ceremony of marriage commenced. Though he could hear Sowter's
voice clearly, and Susan's when she made her sullen responses, Ebenezer
could not by any effort contrive to open his eyes, nor could he more than
mumble when his turn came to repeat the vows. The pill he chewed was
bitter on his tongue, but already, though no more clearheaded than before,
he felt somewhat less miserable; indeed, when Sowter said, "I now pro-
nounce ye man and wife," he felt an impulse of sheer lightheartedness.

"Sign the certificate quickly," Smith urged him, "ere ye fall out on the
floor."

"I'll steady his hand," Burlingame said, and virtually wrote the Laureate's
signature on the paper.

"What is't ye gave him?" Susan demanded, and with her thumb peeled
open one of Ebenezer's eyelids.

" Twas but to ensure he gets his proper rest, Mrs. Cooke," Burlingame
replied.

At the sound of the name Ebenezer opened his mouth to laugh, and
though no sound issued forth, he was delighted at the result.

"Opium!" Susan shrieked.

This news the Laureate found even more amusing than did the company,
but he had no opportunity for another of the pleasant laughs: the fact is,
at that very instant his chair rose from the floor, passed through the roof
of Maiden, and shot up into the opalescent sky. As for Maryland, it turned
blue and flattened into an immense musical surface, which suavely slid
northwestwards under seagulls.

?2: A MARYLANDIAD IS BROUGHT TO BIRTH, BUT ITS
DELIVERER FARES AS BADLY AS IN ANY OTHER
CHAPTER

"TO PARNASSUS!" CRIED THE LAUREATE WITH A LAUGH, AND THE CHAIR
sailed over Thessaly to land between twin mountain cones of polished
alabaster. The valley wherein he came to rest swarmed with thousands upon
thousands of the world's inhabitants, pressing in the foothills.

"I say," he inquired of one nearby who was in the act of tripping up
the fellow just ahead, so as to steal his place, "which is Parnassus?"

"On the right," the man answered over his shoulder. "Everybody knows
that."

"Tis as I understood it to be," the poet replied. "But what if I'd come
up from the other side? Then right would be left, and left right, would
it not? I'm only asking hypothetically," he added, for the stranger frowned
a frown.

"Right is right and be damned to ye," the man growled, and disappeared
into the crowd.

Certainly from where Ebenezer stood, far removed from both, the two
mountains looked quite alike, their pink peaks lost in luminous clouds. Be-
ginning at a ridge just a little way up their slopes were rows or circles
of various obstacles to the climbers. First he saw a ring of ugly men with
clubs, who mashed the climbers' fingers and caused them either to give
over the ascent entirely or remain where they were; similar rings were sta-
tioned at intervals as far as Ebenezer could see up the mountainside, some
armed with hatchets or bodkins instead of clubs. Nor were the areas be-
tween these circles free of danger. Here and there, for example, were groups
of women who, whether in the manner of Circe or of Calypso, invited
the climbers from their objective; beds and couches, set beside tables
of food and wine, lulled the weary men who lay in them to a slumber deep
as death; treadmills there were in abundance, and false signposts that prom-
ised the summit but led in fact (as could be clearly observed from the
valley) to precipices, deserts, jungles, jails, and lunatic asylums. Countless
climbers fell to every sort of obstacle. Those who managed to clear the
first line of guards—whether by forcing through with main strength, by

[480] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

creating a diversion to distract attention from themselves, or by tickling,
fondling, and otherwise pleasing the clubmen— more often than not fell to
the women, the beds, the treadmills, or the false signposts, or if they escaped
those as well, to the next ring of guards, and so forth. The lucky few who
by some one or combination of these techniques passed safely through
the farthest obstacles were applauded mightily by the rest, and it some-
times happened that the very noise of this applause sufficed to make
the climber lose his grip on the slippery alabaster and plunge feet foremost
into the valley again. Others who neared the summit were felled by
rocks from the same hands that had earlier applauded, and still others
were not stoned but merely forgotten. Of the very, very few who remained
fairly secure, some owed their tenure to the heavy pink mists that obscured
them as targets; others to the simple bulk of the peak on which they sat,
and others to the grapes and China oranges that they flung upon demand
to the envious crowd below.

The most important thing, of course, was to choose the proper mountain
in the first place, but since by no amount of inquiry could he gain any
certain information, Ebenezer at length chose arbitrarily and began to
climb with the rest; doubtless, he reasoned, one learned as one climbed,
and in any case, to reach the summit of either would be accomplishment
enough. The first thing he discovered, however, was that the obstacles were
infinitely more formidable face to face than when viewed from afar as a
non-climber: the ring of club-men, when he reached them, were uglier
and more threatening; the women beyond them, and the couches, more
alluring; and the signposts quite authentic in appearance. It was, in fact,
all he could do to muster courage enough to lunge at the nearest guards;
but no sooner was he poised for the attempt than a lordly voice commanded
his chair to raise him to the peak, and without having climbed at all he
found himself sitting among a group of solitary men on a lofty pinnacle of
the mountain.

He singled out one of the oldest and wisest-looking, who was engaged
in paring his toenails. "I say, sir, you'll think me ridiculous to ask, but might
you tell me which mountain this is?"

*Te have me there," the ancient replied. "Sometimes I think 'tis one,
sometimes the other/' He chuckled and added in a stage whisper: "Some-
times I think they're both the same. What doth it matter?"

"How did you get here, if I'm not too bold?" Ebenezer asked further.

"Ah, that was no chore at all/' the old man said. "I was here when
the mountain grew, me and my cronies, and we went up with it. They'll

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [481 ]

never knock us down— but they might raise us so high they can't see us
any more/'

"They're applauding you down there, you know/'

The old man shrugged his shoulders, Burlingame-like. "I suppose they
are, though ye can't hear 'em so well up here. Tis the altitude and the thin-
ness of the air, I've always thought, but I care not a fart one way or the
other."

<rWell," said Ebenezer, made a bit uncomfortable by the man's want
of enthusiasm, "I surely envy you. What a view you have from here! The
people look so small!"

"'Tis in sooth a pleasant view/' the old man admitted. 'Ye can see
well-nigh the entire picture, and it all looks much alike; tell ye the truth,
I get tired looking. 'Tis more comfortable to sit here than to climb, if
comfort's what ye like, albeit those slopes are wondrous slick. Climb if ye
feel like climbing, says I, and don't if ye don't. There's really naught in
in the world up here but clever music; ye'll take pleasure in't if ye've been
reared to like that sort of thing/'

"Oh, I always did like music!"

"Really?" asked the old man without interest.

Their conversation seemed to have reached an impasse; Ebenezer
leaned down to look at the strugglers far below.

"'Sbody, but aren't they silly-looking!" he exclaimed. "And how ill-
mannered, pushing and breaking -wind on one another!"

"They've little else to do," the old man observed.

"But there's naught here to climb for: you've said that yourself!"

"Aye, nor aught anywhere else, either. They'd as well climb mountains
as sit still and die."

"I'm going to jump!" Ebenezer declared suddenly. "I've no wish to see
these things a moment more!"

"No reason why ye oughtn't, nor any why ye ought."

The Laureate made no further move to jump, but sat on the edge of
the peak and sighed. " Tis all most frightfully empty, is't not?"

"Empty indeed," the old man said, "but there's naught o' good or bad
in that. Why sigh?"

"Why not?" asked Ebenezer.

"But why?" repeated the old man.

"Why not?"

"Why not indeed?" the old man sighed, and Ebenezer found himself
in a bed and Richard Sowter bending over him.

[ 482 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"St. Wilgef ortis's beard, here is our bridegroom at long last! Doc Sowter's
oil-o'-mallow ne'er yet let mortal die!"

"Marsh-mallow my sweet arse," said one of the kitchen-women, who ap-
peared beside the bed and regarded the poet with curiosity. " Twas St.
Susie's thistle-physic brought him back."

Sowter counted Ebenezer's pulse briefly and then popped a spoonful
of some syrup into his mouth.

"What room is this, and why am I in't?"

"'Tis one o' Bill Smith's guest rooms," Sowter said.

"Opium!" the Laureate cried, and sat up angrily. "I recall it now!"

"Aye, by blear-eyed old St. Otilic, 'twas opium Tim Mitchell gave ye,
so ye'd have your rest. But ye was that ill to begin with, it came nigh to
fetching ye off." .

"He'll be the death of me, by accident or design. Where is he now?"

"Timothy? Ah, he's long gone, back to his father's place in Calvert
County."

"False friend!" the poet muttered. "If he -left me more insulting verses,
I'll bum 'em unread!" He paused a moment and then fell back in anguish
on his pillow. "Ah God, it escaped me I was wed! Where is Susan, and
what said she of my illness on our wedding night? For I take it 'tis another
day . . ."

The kitchen woman laughed. "Tis plus three weeks ye've languished
'twixt life and death!"

"As for Mrs. Cooke," Sowter said, "I can't say how she felt, for directly
we fetched ye to bed she was gone for Captain Mitchell's in Timothy's
keep. Haply he did your labors for ye."

"Back to Mitchell's!"

"Aye, she's legal-bound to drive his swine, ye know."

"Tis too much!" Ebenezer cried indignantly. "For all she's a shame-
less hussy, the Laureate's lady shan't drive swine! Fetch her here!"

"Now, don't ye fret," the woman soothed. "Susie's run away twice al-
ready, to see for herself what health ye were in and make ye her wondrous
thistle-physic. I doubt not she'll do the same again."

"Three weeks a-swoon! I scarce know what to think!"

"St. Christopher's nightmare, friend, think o' getting well," Sowter sug-
gested cheerfully, "then ye can roger Mistress Susan from matins to vespers,
if ye dare. I'll tell your father-in-law thou'rt back to life, but 'twill be some
weeks yet ere ye have your health entire. Many a poor soul hath been

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 483 ]

seasoned to his grave/' He gathered up his medical paraphernalia and pre-
pared to leave. "Ah yes, here is a present Timmy Mitchell left ye."

"My notebook!" the Laureate exclaimed; Sowter handed him the famil-
iar green-backed ledger, now warped, worn, and soiled from its peregrina-
tions.

"Aye, ye lost it in the inn at Cambridge, and Tim brought it out when
last he came for Susan. He said ye might have verses to write in't whilst
ye rest your six months out/'

"Ah God, I thought 'twas stolen with my clothes!" He clasped it with
much emotion. " Tis an old and faithful friend, this ledger-book— my only
one!"

When he was left alone he found himself still far too weak in body and
spirit for artistic creation, and so he contented himself with reading the
products of his past— all of which seemed strangely remote to him now. He
could, in fact, identify himself much more readily with the stained and
battered notebook than with such couplets as:

Ye ask, What eat our merry Band
En Route to lovely MARYLAND?

which seemed as foreign to him as if they were another man's work. Since
he had happened to begin with the most recent entry and thence to work
toward the front of the book, the last thing he read was a note for his
projected Marylandiad, made while his audience with Lord Baltimore (that
is to say, Burlingame) was still fresh in his memory: MARYLANDS Ex-
cellencies are peerless, it read; her Inhabitants are the most gracious, their
Breeding unmatch'd; her Dwelling-places are the grandest; her Inns & Or-
dinaries the most courteous and comfortable; her Fields the richest; her
Courts & Laws the most majestic; her Commerce the most prosperous,
& cet., & cet. The note was subscribed, in Ebenezer's own hand, E. C.,

Gent7 pt & Lt Of M^

He lay back and closed his eyes; his head throbbed from the small exer-
tion of perusing his work. "I'faith!" he said to himself. "What price this
laureateship! Will I sing these lies, so to write P* & U of Maryland after
my name? Gracious folk! Grand dwellings and hostelries! Majestic courts-
of-law! Out on't! Here's naught but scoundrels and perverts, hovels and
brothels, corruption and poltroonery! What glory, to be singer of such a
sewer!"

Thus raged the poet, while memories of his every trial came back to
him as fresh as if they were events of the hour just past. The more he re-

[484] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

called, the more his anguish became infused with wrath, until at length,
despite his weariness, he ripped from the ledger his entire stock of sea-verses,
and using the quill and ink provided by his host he wrote on the virgin
paper thus exposed:

Condemned by Fate, to wayward Curse,
Of Friends unkind, and empty Purse,
Plagues worse than fill'd Pandoras Box,
I took my Leave of Albions Rocks,
With heavy Heart, concern' d that I
Was forc'd my native Soil to fly,
And the old World must bid Good-Vye.

No sooner were these lines set down than more came rushing unbidden
to his fancy, and though he was not strong enough at the time to write
them out, he conceived then and there a momentous project to occupy
him during the weeks ahead— which, should he find no means of regain-
ing his estate, might well be his last on earth. He would versify his voyage
to Maryland from beginning to end, just as he had planned before, but
so far from writing a panegyric,, he would scourge the Province with
the lash of Hudibrastic as a harlot is scourged at the public post, catalogue
her every wickedness, and expose her every trap laid for the trusting, the
unwary, the innocent!

"Thus might others be instructed by my loss," he reflected grimly. "But

stay " He remembered the details of his abuse at the hands of the

Poseidon's crew, the rape of the Cyprian, Burlingame's pig, and other
indelicate features of his adventure. " 'Twill ne'er be printed."

For some moments he was bitterly discouraged, for this reflection implied
a cruel paradox: the very wickedness of one's afflictions can prevent one's
avenging them by public exposure. But he soon saw a means to circumvent
that difficulty,

"I shall make the piece a fiction! I'll be a tradesman, say— -nay, a factor
that comes to Maryland on's business, with every good opinion of the
country, and is swindled of his goods and property. All my trials I'll recon-
ceive to suit the plot and alter just enough to pass the printer!"

The sequence instantly unfolded in his imagination, and he made a quick
prose outline lest it slip away. He could do no more just then; exhausted
by the effort, he slept for several hours dreamlessly. However, when he
reawakened, the vision was still clear in his mind, and what was more, the
Hudibrastic couplets wherewith he meant to render it began springing

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 485 ]

readily to hand. He could scarcely wait to launch into composition: as soon
as he was strong enough he left his bed, but only because the writing
desk in his chamber was more comfortable to work at; there he spent day
after day, and week after week, setting down his long poem. So jealous was
he of his time that he rebuffed the curiosity and occasional solicitude of
Smith, Sowter, and the kitchen-women; he demanded— and, somewhat to
his surprise, received—his meals at his desk, and never left his room except
to take health-walks in the late October and November sun. All thoughts
of suicide departed from him for the time, as did, on the other hand, all
thoughts of regaining his lost estate. He was not disturbed or even curious
about the absence of any word from Henry Burlingame. When, a week
or ten days after his awakening from coma, his legal wife Susan Warren
reappeared at Maiden, he thanked her brusquely for her aid in nursing
him back to health, but although he understood from the kitchen-women
that at Mitchell's and Smith's direction she had become a prostitute ex-
clusively for the Indians, he neither protested her activities or her return
to Mitchell on the one hand, nor sought annulment of his marriage on
the other.

Maiden itself was becoming every day more evidently a gambling
house, tavern, brothel, and opium den: Susan brought the brown phials
with her from Calvert County, and Mary Mungummory— who, the poet
learned, had previously resisted Mitchell's efforts to draw her into his
organization— moved in with her entire retinue of doxies and accepted the
office of madame of the house. Every night the whole point bustled: plant-
ers came from all over Dorset by horse and wagon, and by boat from Talbot
County as well, across the great mouth of the Choptank, and the house
rang with their debauchery. From the mid-county fresh marshes and even
the salt marshes of the lower county, twenty and thirty miles to the south-
east, Abaco, Wiwash, and Nanticoke Indians came to engage Susan and
two of Mary Mungummory's least-favored employees in a tobacco-curing
house set aside for the purpose. But Ebenezer, so far from expressing in-
dignation, chagrin, or even regret at this state of affairs, ignored it almost
entirely. He walked obliviously past the gaming tables, through the rooms
of intoxicated, narcotized, and lecherous Marylanders, and across the to-
bacco fields where knots of solemn Indians moved toward the curing-house.
He soon became a figure of fun among the clients, but their jests met with
the same indifference with which he rewarded Susan when, upon his entry
into a room, she would follow him with troubled and inquiring eyes.

[486] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Throughout November he labored at the task of casting into rhyme the
sorry episodes of his journey:

Freighted with Fools, from Plimouth Sound,
To MARYLAND our Ship was bound;
Where we arriv'd, in dreadful Pain,
Shock' d by the Tenors of the Main. . .

He recalled his first encounter with the planters in St. Mary's County,
whom he had mistaken for field hands

. . . a numerous Crew,
In Shirts and Drawers of Scotch-cloth blew,
With neither Stocking, Hat, nor Shoe . . .

— and to their description appended the couplets written long before under
different circumstances, painful now to remember:

Figures, so strange, no GOD designed
To be a Part of Human-kind:
But Wanton Nature, void of Rest,
Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest . . .

Shifting with masterly nonchalance from tetrametric to pentametric
verses, he next proceeded to flay the inhabitants of his poetical bailiwick

. . . that Shore where no good Sense is Found,
But Conversation's lost, and Manners drown' d . . .

— and thereafter to describe in turn, once more in four-footed lines, his
trip across the Patuxent River in a canoe:

Cut from a Poplar tree, or Pine,

And fashion'd like a Trough for Swine . . .

The encounter with Susan's herd of pigs:

This put me in a pannick Fright,
Lest I should be devour' d quite . . .

His lawful wife the swine-maiden herself:

. . . by her loose and sluttish Dress,
She rather seem'd a Bedlam-Bess . . .

His fruitless vigil in the barnyard:

Where, riding on a Limb astride,
Night and the Branches did me hide,
And I the De'el and Snake defy'd . . .

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 487 ]

the spectacle of the open-air assizes:

. . .the Crowds did there resort,

Which Justice made, and Law, their Sport,

In their Sagacious County Court . . .

The trial:

The planting Rabble being met,
Their drunken Worships likewise sat,
Cryer proclaims the Noise shoud cease,
And streight the Lawyers broke the Peace,
Wrangling for Plaintiff and Defendant,
I thought they ne'er -tfoud make an End on't,
With Nonsense, Stuff, and false Quotations
With brazen Lies, and Allegations . . .

Judge Hammaker himself:

. . . -who, to the Shame,

Of all the Bench, cou'd write his 'Name . . .

His night in the corncrib:

Just then beginning to be drunk,

As from the Company I shrunk:

To every Room and Nook I crept,

In hopes I might have somewhere slept;

But all the Bedding was possest,

By one or other drunken Guest;

But after looking long about,

I found an antient Corn-loft out;

Glad that I might in Quiet sleep,

And there my Bones unfractur'd keep:

I lay me down secur'd from Fray,

And soundly snor'd till break o' Day;

When waking fresh, I sat upright,

And found my Shoes were vanished quite,

Hat, Wig, and Stockings, all were fled,

From this extended Indian Bed . . .

The kitchen-whores at Maiden:

. . . a jotty Female Crew9
Were deep engagd at Lanterloo,
In Nightrails white, with dirty Mien,
Such Sights are scarce in England seen:
I thought, them first some Witches, bent
On black Designs, in dire Convent;

. . . who, with affected Air,
Had nicely learn1 d to Curse and Swear . . .

[ 488 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

His illness:

J felt a Fever intermitting,

A fiery Pulse beat in my Veins,

From cold 1 felt resembling Pains;

This cursed Seasoning I remember

Lasted . . . till cold December;

Nor cou'd it then it's Quarter shift,

Until by Carduus turn'd adrift:

And had my doct'ress wanted Skill,

Or Kitch'n-Physick at her Will,

My Father's Son had lost his Lands . . .

And his exploitation by the versatile Richard Sowter:

. . . and ambodexter Quack,
Who learnedly had got the Knack
Of giving Clysters, making Pitts,
Of filling Bonds, and forging, Wilk . . .

When at last he had recounted the sum of his misfortunes by means
of the sot-weed-factor allegory, he imagined himself fleeing to an outbound
ship, and so concluded ferociously:

Embarqu'd and waiting for a Wind,

I leave this dreadful Curse behind.

May Canniballs transported o'er the Sea

Prey on these Slaves, as they have done on me;

May never Merchant's trading Sails explore

This cruel, this Inhospitable Shoar;

But left abandon'd by the World to starve,

May they sustain the Fate they well deserve:

May they turn Salvage, or as Indians wild,

From Trade, Converse, and Happiness exil'd;

Recreant to Heaven, may they adore the Sun,

And into Pagan Superstitions run

For Vengeance ripe —

May Wrath Divine then lay these Regions vtast

Where no Man's Faithful, nor a Woman chastl

The heat of his sustained creative passion must have either enlarged his
talent or softened his critical acumen, for never before had he felt so potent,
so assured, so poetic, as in the composition of this satire. During the first
two weeks of December he smoothed and polished it— adjusting an iamb
here, tuning the clatter of a Hudibrastic there, until on St. Lucy's day,
December 13, he was prepared to deem the piece truly finished. At its head

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [489]

he wrote: The Sot-Weed Factor: Or, a Voyage to Maryland. A Satyr. In
which is describ'd, the Laws, Government, Courts and Constitutions of
the Country; and also the Buildings, Feasts, Frolicks, Entertainments and
Drunken Humours of the Inhabitants of that Port of America. And at the
foot, with grand contempt, he affixed his full title— Ebenezer Cooke, Gen-
tleman, Poet & Laureat of the Province of Maryland— in full recognition
that with the poem's publication, should he ever send it to a printer, he
would forfeit any chance of receiving that title in fact.

Publication, however, did not especially interest him at the moment.
He put by his quill and surveyed the thousand and more lines of manuscript
in his ledger.

"By Lucy's bloody thorn, 'tis writ!" he sighed, mocking Sowter's inclina-
tion to swear in saintly symbols. "And there's an end on't!"

He had not the slightest idea what would happen next— where he should
go or what do— nor had he just then the smallest worry. To the bone he
felt the pleasure of large and sure accomplishment, which is ever one part
joy and nine relief; benediction-like, it soothed his spirit, and relaxed his
every muscle like a balm. Indeed, he was possessed with an urge to close
his eyes and sleep where he sat at his writing desk; but the early winter
night had only just darkened— it was, in fact, not an hour since supper—
and he felt a contrary desire to celebrate in some small way, not The Sot-
Weed Factor itself, whose existence was its own festivity, but the end of
the labors that had brought it to birth.

"A glass of rum's the thing/' he decided, and went downstairs to where
the evening's activities were just getting started. His intention was to go
to the kitchen, that being the only room at Maiden, other than his own
chamber, where he could be reasonably confident of his reception; but on
his way he encountered William Smith and Richard Sowter, who had be*
come fast friends, perhaps even business associates, since the fall.

"How now, by Kenelm's dove!" the latter said on seeing him. "Here is
our poet."

"Speak of the devil," Smith observed. "Thou'rt looking hale enough,
and pleased, this night."

"I am both," Ebenezer admitted, "with little cause for either." The truth
was, the mere sight of his undoers had cost him much of the pleasant
sense of well-being with which he'd left his finished manuscript. "You were
speaking of me?"

"Aye, that we were," Smith said. " Twas a general discussion on points
o' law we were having, and I brought ye in by way of illustration."

[49°] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Mr. Smith here raised the question/' Sowter joined in, "whether, in a
contract made to complete a job o' work within a given time, the instru-
ment becomes null and void directly the job is done or remains in force
regardless till the designated time runs out. My answer was, it hangs
altogether on the wording of the contract, whether its expiration hath a
single or alternative contingency."

Ebenezer smiled uncertainly. "That seems a reasonable reply, but I am
no lawyer."

"Nor am I," Smith said, "and so to get a fairer notion of the thing, I
asked him to apply it to that contract drawn 'twixt thee and me, regarding
your ill health "

"Go to the point," Ebenezer said stiffly. "I see your purpose."

"Ah, now, I have no wish to cheat ye of your due," Smith insisted. "It
hath been an honor and a pleasure to have the Laureate Poet for house
guest, and nurse him back to health. Yet the fact is, as well ye can observe,
I've a thriving little hostelry in Maiden, and an idle room is to an inn-
keeper like a fallow field to a sot-weed planter."

"In short, now I'm on my feet once more you wish me gone, so that
your whores can ply their trade upon my bed."

"Stay, calm thy heat," Sowter urged. " Tis my opinion, as your physician,
thou'rt as well a man as ever braided Catherine's tresses, and I have said
farther, as Mr. Smith's attorney, his contract in the matter hath alternative
contingencies for expiration; namely, the restoration of your health or six
months of bed, board, and proper care."

"Say no more," Ebenezer said, "the rest is clear, and I'll not contest it.
If you'll but grant me two small favors— nay, three— you will not see me
on the morrow."

"Nay, hear me out "

^ "Have no fear of these requests," Ebenezer went on contemptuously.
"They'll not interfere in any way with your profit. The first is that you
give me a pot of rum, wherewith to celebrate a poem I've written;
the second is that you send the poem to a certain London printer, whose
address I shall give you; and the third is that you lend me a loaded pistol,
to use when the rum is gone."

"A turd on the pistol," Smith declared. "Thou'rt no good Catholic,
methinks, e'en to speak oft, and ye spring too quickly to the worst ex-
pedient. I have no wish to turn ye out at all "

"What?"

"St. Dunstan's gold tongs," Sowter laughed, "'tis what I tried to tell

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 4Q1 ]

re! Mr. Smith must have your chamber for his business, but so far from
vishing ye ill, he hath proposed to be your patron, as't were." He explained
:hat the cooper had directed him to draw up a remarkable indenture-bond,
:o sign which would entitle the poet to free room and board in the serv-
mts' quarters indefinitely, and commit him only to a nominal amount of
:lerical work.

" Twill be no more than a paper to write or endorse on occasion/' Smith
assured him. "The balance of the time is your own, to versify or what ye
will."

Ebenezer shrugged. "It matters not to me one way or the other. Draw
up your bond, and I shall read it."

"I have't here this minute/' Sowter said, producing a document from
his coat. "For a man with St. Francis's distemper, like yourself, 'tis a virtual
sinecure, I swear!"

The opportunity to compose more poetry was in truth attractive to Eben-
ezer, though at the moment he had no ideas whatever for future poems.
He considered also the possibility that Burlingame's unexplained absence
might have to do with some scheme for undoing Smith, though he had
come rather to attribute it to another, perhaps final, desertion. And ulti-
mately, of course, the pistol was always there as a last resort: he could see no
great loss in postponing its use for a time. Therefore, after reading it
cursorily and finding its provisions to be as Sowter had described, he signed
both copies of the four-year indenture with no emotion whatever.

"Now thou'rt my patron," he said to Smith, "haply you'll indulge your
protege with a pot of rum."

"No pot, but an entire rundlet," the cooper answered happily. "And
hi! Yonder's your wedded wife, fresh-come from Mitchell's!"

"Ye look well chilled, St. Susie," Sowter laughed. "Warm your arse here
by the fire and take a dram with our poet ere ye set to work in the curing-
house: your father hath indented him to four years o' rhyming."

"I'll fetch the girls in from the kitchen," Smith declared. "We'll have a
celebration ere the night's work starts!"

Susan came into the little parlor and stared at Ebenezer without com-
ment.

" Twas that or the pistol/' he said. Something in her expression alarmed
him, and his tone was defensive. Smith reappeared with two women from
the kitchen; when the drams were passed round, the Frenchwoman perched
on Sowter's knees and the other on Smith's lap.

[492] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"So ye fled your master yet again?" Sowter called merrily to Susan.
"I swear by Martin's pox, he keeps a light hold on his wenches!"

"Aye, I fled him/' Susan said, not joining in the general mirth.

"And did you find another such fool as I," Ebenezer inquired acidly,
"to pay your escape and wait your pleasure in Mitchell's barn?" Whether
because her wretched appearance— she was shivering, and both her clothes
and her face were more ruined than ever— reminded him that his legal wife
was a pig-driver, an opium-eater, and the lowest sort of prostitute, or simply
because he had never properly thanked her for nursing him back to health,
the strangeness of her manner made him feel guilty for having ignored
her during the composition of his long poem.

"Aye, I found another. A dotard too old for such schemes, says I, though
there's no law yet against dreaming." Despite the levity of her words, both
her tone and her expression were incongruously grave. "I have more cock
in my eye than he hath in his breeches, and I'm not cock-eyed. A be-
spectacled old fool, he was, with a withered arm."

"Nay!" Ebenezer breathed. "Tell me not he had a withered arm!"

"Aye, and he did."

"Yet surely 'twas his left arm was withered, was't not?"

Susan hesitated, and then in the same grave voice said, "Nay, as I think
on't, 'twas his right: he sat at my left in the wagon whilst I told him the
tale of my misfortune, and I recall he was obliged to reach over with his
far arm to tweak and abuse me."

Ebenezer felt a sudden nausea. "But he was a peasant, for all that," he
insisted. "A wheelwright, belike, or teamster?"

"Not a bit oft. 'Twas clear from his clothes and carriage he was a gentle-
man of highest quality, and he said he had arrived that very day from
London."

Tfaith," said one of the kitchen-women, "ye'll find no London gentle-
men in the curing-house, Susie; ye should have let him swive ye!"

"Nay, God!" Ebenezer cried, so mournfully that the whole company
left off their mirth and regarded him with consternation. " Tis I he'll swive,
not you! That man was Andrew Cooke of Middlesex, my father, come
to see how fares his son! The pistol!" he cried, jumping to his feet. "There
is no help for't now!"

"Stay!" Smith commanded. "Stop him, Susan!"

" 'Tis the pistol!" the poet shouted again, and fled for his chamber be-
fore anyone could detain him.

33: THE LAUREATE DEPARTS FROM HIS ESTATE

SUCH WAS HIS AGITATION THAT NOT UNTIL HE WAS IN HIS ROOM, STILL

lighted by a candle he had left burning on the writing table, did the Laure-
ate recall that he had no pistol with which to destroy himself, nor even a
short-sword— his own having been stolen along with the rest of his costume
in the corncrib and never returned to him. He heard the company swarm-
ing up the stairs from the parlor, and threw himself in despair upon his
bed.

The first to reach his door was Susan; she took one look at him and
bade the others stay back. "Let me speak to him/' she pleaded.

"We'll wait below," Smith grumbled. "But mind, see to't there's no
trouble. I shan't have his idle brains all over my house."

All this the poet heard face down in the quilts. Susan closed the door
behind her and sat on the edge of his bed.

"Do ye mean to blow your head off?" she inquired.

" Tis the final misfortune/' he answered without raising his head. "I
have no pistol, nor means to purchase one. Yell not be widowed this eve-
ning, so it seems."

"Will your father's wrath be so terrible?"

TChrist, 'tis past imagining!" Ebenezer groaned. *Tet e'en were he
the very soul of mercy, I am too shamed to face him."

Susan sighed. " Twill be passing strange, to be the widow of a man
that ne'er hath wifed me."

"Nor ever shall!" Ebenezer sat up angrily. "Much you care, with your
curing-house salvages and your opium! Marry you my friend Henry Burlin-
game, that will wife you with your swine— there's a match!"

"The world is strange and full o' wickedness," Susan murmured.

"So at least is this verminous province, whose delights I was supposed
to sing!" He shook his head. "Ah, marry, I have no call to injure you: for-
give my words."

" Tis a long, hard fall ye've fallen, but prithee speak no more o' pistols/'
Susan said. "Flee, if ye must, and start again elsewhere."

"Where flee?" cried Ebenezer. "Better the pistol than another day in
Maryland!"

[494] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Back to England, I mean: hide yourself till the fleet sails, and thou'rt
quit of your father for good and all."

''Very good," the Laureate said bitterly. "And shall I kiss the captain
for my freight?"

"Mr. Cooke!" Susan whispered suddenly. She leaned over him and
clutched his shoulders. "Nay: Ebenezer! Husbandl"

"What's this? What are you doing?"

"Stay, hear me!" Susan urged. " Tis true I'm but a whore and scurvy
night-bag, and ruined by ill-usage. Tis true ye'd small choice in the wedding
of me, and ye've small cause to love me. But I say again 'tis a strange life,
and full o' things ye little dream of: not all is as ye think, my dovel"

"'Sheart!"

"I love ye!" she hissed. "Let's fly together from this sink o' perdition
and begin anew in England! There's many a trick a poor man can play
in London, and I know the bagful of 'em!"

"But— but marry," Ebenezer protested, snatching at the gentlest excuse
he could think of. "I've not one fare, let alone two!"

Susan was not daunted in the least. " Tis a peddlepot ye've wed," she
declared. "I'd as well turn my shame to our advantage, to rid us o' Mary-
land forever."

"What is't you intend?"

"I'll hie me to the curing-house anon, and whore the sum."

Ebenezer shook his head. " Tis a noble plan," he sighed. "Such a whore-
dom were more a martyrdom, methinks, and merits awe. But I cannot

go"

The woman released him. "Not go?"

"Nay, not though I changed my name and face and escaped my father's
wrath forever. The living are slaves to memory and conscience, and should
we flee together, the first would plague me with thoughts of Father and

my sister Anna, while the second " He paused. "I cannot say it less

briefly or cruelly than this: nine months ago I pledged my love to the Lon-
don girl Joan Toast and offered her my innocence, which she spurned. Twas
after that I vowed to remain as virginal as a priest and worship the god
of poetry. This Joan Toast had a lover, that was her pimp as well, and
albeit 'twas on his account my father sent me off to Maryland, and I had
every cause to think his mistress loathed me, yet she was ever in my
thoughts, and in my most parlous straits thereafter, I never broke my pledge.
Think, then, how moved I was to learn that she had followed after me, out
of love! I had resolved to wed her, and make her mistress of my estate, and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 495 1

indeed I'd have done no less had all gone well, so much I love her! Now
Maiden's mine no more, and my sweet Joan is disappeared from sight, and
whether 'twas to escape marrying a wretched pauper she flew, or to join
her lover McEvoy, still she came hither on my account, as did he. How
could I fly with you to London, when I know not how they fare, or whether
they live or die?"

Susan commenced weeping. "Am I so horrid by comparison to your
Joan? Nay, don't trouble to lie: I know by sight the beauty of her face,
and the loathesomeness of mine. Little d'ye dream how jealous I am of
her!"

"The world hath used you hardly," Ebenezer said.

"Ye know not half! I am its very sign and emblem!"

"And yet thou'rt generous and valiant, and have saved both Joan Toast
and myself from death."

Susan grasped his arm. "What would ye say, if ye learned Joan Toast
was in this very house?"

"What!" Ebenezer cried, starting up. "How can that be, and I've not
seen her? What is't you say?"

"She is in this house this very moment, and hath been since she fled
from Captain Mitchell! Here is proof." She drew from her bosom a neck-
lace of dirty string, on which was threaded the fishbone ring presented to
Ebenezer by Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King.

"I'God, the ring I gave you for her fare! Where is she?"

"Stay, Eben," Susan cautioned. "Ye've not heard all ye must before ye
see her."

"A fart for't! Don't try to keep me from her!"

" 'Tis by her own instruction," Susan said, and blocked the door to the
hallway. "Why is't, d'ye think, she hath not shown herself ere now?"

"Marry, I know not, nor dare I think! But I die to see her!"

" Tis only fit, for she hath done no less to see you."

Ebenezer stopped as if smitten by a hammer. Tears sprang to his eyes,
and he was obliged to take the nearest seat— which happened to be the
one at his writing desk— before he fell.

"Aye, she is dead!" Susan said. "Dead of French pox, opium, and d&-
spair! I saw her die, and 'twas not pretty."

"Ah God!" Ebenezer moaned, his features in a turmoil. "Ah God!"

"Ye know already how she was taken with love for ye, and for your
innocence, after she had spumed ye in your room; and ye know she turned
her back on John McEvoy when he wrote that letter to your father. A dream

[496] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

got hold of her, such as any whore is prone to, to live her life with you in
perfect chastity, and it so possessed her that anon she vowed to follow ye
to Maryland— the more inasmuch as 'twas on her account ye were sent
thither— and she fondly hoped ye'd have her for your wife and sister. But
she had no money for her freight, and so for all she'd sworn to have no
more o' whoring, it seemed she was obliged to swive her fare."

" 'Sheart, how this news wounds me!" Ebenezer cried.

" Tis joyous by comparison with the rest," Susan declared. " Tis com-
mon knowledge that a pretty girl can swive most men round her finger,
and any man at all if she hath fancy enough and spirit in her sporting
—such is the world, and there's no help for't. 'Twas Joan Toast's plan
to find a willing sea captain, as hath many another lass, who'd let her
warm his cabin the first week out in payment for her freight; yet she was
so loath to play the whore again,, she devised another scheme, the which
was far more perilous and unpleasant in every way, but had the single
merit that if it did not fail, she'd reach the Maryland shore unswived.
She had heard it said along the wharves that whores were as scarce in
America as Jews in the College o' Cardinals— so much so, that any lass
who wished could cross the ocean free of charge in a certain ship, provided
that when she got there she would hire herself to one or another of the
whoremasters who met the boat."

Ebenezer groaned. "I dare not let my fancy run ahead!"

"Her new plan was, to sign aboard this vessel, that carried no other
passengers but friskers, and so reach America unswived; once ashore, she'd
bend her wit to find some means of escaping her obligation— nor did that
prospect much alarm her, for so eager were the provinces for women, and
so eager the women for the high fees they could charge, there was no
contract or other writ to bind 'em to their pledge."

"This ship/' Ebenezer broke in. "I tremble to hear its name, but if she
told you, I must know't"

"'Twas called the Cyprian— the same that was attacked by pirates off
the Maryland coast and all her women, save one, fetched to the rail and
raped!"

"Save one? B'm'faith, then dare I hope "

"Ye dare not," Susan said. "Joan Toast was the one, in sooth, that was
not ravished at the rail, but the reason for't is, she fled aloft to the mizzen-
rigging!"

"FChrist, i'Christ, 'twas her!" Ebenezer cried. "Know, Susan, that these
were the pirates of Captain Thomas Pound, the same that some time earlier

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [49?]

had taken my valet and myself from the Poseidon at John Coode's behest!
I know not how much Joan told you, but I must make confession now
ere I perish of remorse: I was witness to this very piracy; I saw the Cyprian
women bound up along the rail; I saw a hapless maid break free and scram-
ble up the mizzen ratlines, though I little dreamed then who she was; I
saw the Moor go after her "

"That Moor!" Susan said with a shudder. "I know him well from her
relation, and grow sick and cold at the memory! But hear the story "

"I am not done with my confession/' Ebenezer protested.

"'Nor have ye aught to confess, that is not known to me already/' Susan
said grimly, and resumed her tale. "As soon as the pirates showed their
colors, the captain advised the women not to resist but rather to submit
with right good will, in hopes that once the pirates had swived their lust
away, they'd leave 'em with a whole skin and a floating ship. But two girls
hid in the farthest crannies of the bilge: Joan Toast because she'd vowed
to stay chaste as a nun, and another girl so ruined with claps and poxes
that she had but a few more days to live and wished to go to her grave
unraped."

"And there the Moor discovered them! I am ill!"

"There he found 'em/' Susan affirmed. " Twas what every lass shudders
at in dreams: they crouched there in the dark, with the sounds o' lewd
attack above their heads, and then the hatchway to the bilge was opened,
and the monstrous Moor came in! He had a taper in his hand, and in its
light they saw his face and his huge black body. When he spied the two
women he gave a great snort like a bull and leaped upon the nearest,
that happened to be the one not far from death. Twas Joan's bad luck as
well as his he could not see the wench's pox by candlelight, for anon when
he was done and went for Joan, she would have two miseries instead
of one to fear."

Ebenezer could only moan and shake his head.

"She made to flee whilst he was going at the sick girl, but he caught
her by the ankle and knocked her such a swingeing clout she knew no
more till he was carrying her and another up the ladderway to the deck.
When she managed to break free and climb the rigging, as ye witnessed,
'twas her last fond hope he would give o'er the chase and take his pleasure
with the flossies on the deck; but ere she reached the top the roll and
pitch o' the rig so terrified her, she was obliged to stop climbing and thrust
her arms and legs through like a fly in a web. Twas there the great Moor

[498] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

cracked her till she fainted dead away, and 'twas there she hung till Heaven
knows when— ravished, poxed, and seeded with the monster's seed!"

"Ah, nolw

"No less," Susan confirmed. "Albeit 'twas not made plain till some
time after, the Moor had got her with child. Yet all this barbarous usage
was as naught beside her next misfortune: she had scarce thrown off her
swoon and found herself still hanging in the rigging, when she heard another
pirate climbing up and calling lewdly to her as he climbed. She resolved
to leap into the ocean if 'twas the Moor, but when she turned to look "

"Twas I," Ebenezer wept, "and may I fry in Hell for't! For the first
time in my life I was possessed with lust like any rutting goat, and I had
no hope of seeing Joan Toast again, that I thought despised me. Great
God, 'twas only Pound's departure saved her from another rape, and at
the hands of the man she'd suffered all the rest for! To this day I cannot
understand that weakness, nor the other, when I made to force you at
Captain Mitchell's."

"For you 'twas simple lust, that mortal men are prone to," Susan replied,
"but to Joan Toast 'twas the end o' the world, for she loved ye as more
than mortal. When the Cyprian put in at Philadelphia she signed herself
to the first whoremaster on the dock, that chanced to be Captain Mitchell
o' Calvert County."

"Dear Heav'n, d'you mean to say "

"I mean to say she was his harlot from the first! The pox she'd got
from the Moor soon spread over her in foul eruptions, and no gentleman
would hire her; what's more she learned she was with child, peradventure
by the Moor. Anon she took to opium for respite from her miseries, and
thus fell into Mitchell's hands by perpetual indenture, and was set to pox-
ing salvages and sundry menial chores. Twas then ye appeared a castaway
at Mitchell's, like a figure in a dream, and so ashamed she was of her ruin,
and possessed by wrath that ye'd betrayed her, and withal despairing of
her future, she vowed to make an end on't, and took her life. 'Twas not
the fair Joan Toast o' Locket's that this ring sent o'er to Maiden, but
her awful corse!"

"And I her murtherer!" cried Ebenezer. "As surely as if I'd shot her
through the heart!" He sprang up from the chair. "I shall see her grave
and end my life as well! Where is her body?"

" 'Tis where it hath been many and many a time since the fall o' the
year," Susan said, and laid her hand upon her chest. "Here is the corse of
your Joan Toast, before your eyes!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [499]

"You! Ah, nay, that cannot be!" But the realization that it was had al-
ready sent fresh tears coursing down his cheeks. " Tis too impossible! Henry
—Henry would have known, i' Christ! And Smith, your father "

"Henry Burlingame hath known me from the night ye came to Mitchell's,
and hath preserved the secret at my request/'

"But the story of Susan Warren and Elizabeth Williams "

"Tis true, the whole oft, save for one detail: it is the story of the poor
girl's plight when I was brought to Mitchell's. Twas my likeness to her,
and hers to Elizabeth Williams, that had fetched the high price he paid
me; soon after he'd enthralled me with his opium, he murthered Susan
in a fit o' rage, and buried her as Elizabeth Williams!"

"'Sheart!"

" Twas necessary then," Joan declared, "to hide his crime, for he wanted
no attention brought to bear on his business. Therefore he sought out
William Smith at Maiden and told him the girl had died o' pox; then,
to be entirely safe, he promised to make Smith a wealthy whoremaster on
condition he avow me as his daughter. The cooper's greed got the better
of his sentiment, and of course I had no say in the matter."

"But marry!" Ebenezer cried. "This Mitchell's a greater fiend than his
master Coode!"

"I know not who is Mitchell's master, or whether in sooth he hath one,
but I know there is some monstrous plot afoot. Mitchell is freighting his
opium to every quarter of the Province, and girls like me are set a-purpose
to pox the hapless Indians."

The image of this latter, together with the memory of his behavior at
Mitchell's and his share of responsibility for her .plight in general, were
too much for Ebenezer to endure: he was seized with a fit of dry retches
that left him lying exhausted across the bed.

" Twas merely as a test I mentioned Joan Toast's name, to gauge your
feeling for her; and another when I bargained to swive ye for my boat
fare: had ye spurned me I'd have marked it to my ugliness, inasmuch as
ye'd meant to rape me on the Cyprian when I was comelier. Yet when
instead ye had at me in the bedchamber 'twas still no flattery, for ye de-
claredjye'd play the virgin yet at Maiden with Joan Toast."

"Only let me die for shame!" Ebenezer wailed. "Fetch me a pistol from
below and take revenge for all your suffering! Or summon John McEvoy
and tell him what you've endured on my account— I shall share his pleasure
in murthering me!"

"I have already seen John McEvoy/' Joan replied, "here, in this very

[ 500 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

house, not six weeks past. He had heard of your loss of Maiden and sought
me out through Burlingame whilst ye were ill."

"How must he loathe me!"

"E'en ere he'd seen the state Fd come to," Joan said glibly, " 'twas his
greatest wish to kill ye."

"Then fetch him in to shoot me, and have done with't!"

"Hear me out." Joan moved to stand over him at the edge of the bed. "I
told him we were man and wife, albeit ye were still virginal,, and I loved
ye yet despite my sore afflictions; and I told him that for your misfortunes,
and my own, and his as well, no one of us could be blamed alone, but all
must share the guilt. At last I said I love him still, but not as I love my hus-
band, and that if he did ye harm, 'twould but be injuring me as well. Then
I sent him away and bade him return no more, for A woman may have at
once three-score o' lovers, but only one beloved at a time. I have had no
news of him since, nor do I wish any."

Ebenezer was too overwhelmed to speak.

"Here is six pounds your father gave me to flee Mitchell with," Joan
concluded briskly, laying the money on the counterpane. " 'Tis enough for
one fare, and two hours in the curing-house will earn the other. The bark
Pilgrim sails from Cambridge on the early-morning tide, to join the fleet
at Kecoughtan."

"You are too good!" the poet wept "What can I say or do to show my
love?"

"No man can love the wreck ye married," Joan replied. "But if ye truly
wish to ease my chore, there is a thing I'd have ye do."

"Anything!" Ebenezer swore, and then realized with horror what she
might ask.

"I see your fear upon your face," Joan observed. "Put it by; 'tis not your
innocence I crave."

"I swear to, you "

"Pray don't; 'twere a needless perjury. I ask ye but to wear this fishbone
ring ye gave me, that hath such a curious value with some planters, and
give me to wear in turn your silver seal ring: 'twill make me feel more a
wife and less a hedge-whore."

"Tis little recompense," Ebenezer said, and though in fact it gave him
considerable pain to relinquish the ring his sister had given him, he dared
not show his feelings when he pulled it from his finger and Joan slipped
the larger fishbone in its place.

"Swear to me thou'rt my husband!" she demanded.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 501 ]

"I swear't to Heav'n! And thou'rt my wife, for ever and aye!"

"Nay, Eben, 'twere too much for me to crave, and you to swear. I dare

not hope ye'll even wait/'

"May some god strike me dead if I do not! How can you think oft!"
Joan shook her head and turned the silver seal ring on her finger. "I must

go to the curing-house now in any case/' she said grimly. "The ring will

help."

For some time after her departure Ebenezer lay fully dressed across the
bed, still overcome by all he'd learned that evening. The candle, freshly
lit after supper to illuminate the completion of his poem, had long since
burned low and was extinguished by the slight draft from the hallway upon
Joan's exit. In one hand he clutched the money Joan had left him; he
fingered the fishbone ring and prayed wordless prayers of gratitude to what-
ever gods had granted him this means of escaping his father's wrath on the
one hand and suicide on the other, and at the same time of discharging,
in some measure, his awful obligation to Joan Toast.

"What business hath a poet with the business of the world?" he asked
himself rhetorically. "With properties and estates, the tangled quarrels of
governments, and the nets of love? They are his subject matter only,
and the -more he plays a part therein, the less he sees them clearly and
entire. This was the great mistake I made in starting: the poet must
fling himself into the arms of Life, e'en as I said, and pry into her priviest
charms and secrets like a lover, but he must hide his heart away and
ne'er surrender it, be cold as the callous gigolo, whose art with women
springs from his detachment; or like those holy fathers that wallowed once
in sin, the better to hie them to their cells and reject the world with under-
standing, so the poet must engage himself in whate'er world he's born to,
but shake free oft ere it shackle him. He is a keen and artful traveler, that
finding himself in alien country apes the dress and manners of them that
dwell there, the better to mark their barbarous custom; but a traveler none-
theless, that doth not linger overlong. He may play at love, or learning, or
money-getting, or government—aye, even at morals or metaphysic— so long
as he recalls 'tis but a game played for the sport oft, and for failure or
success alike cares not a fart. I am a poet and no creature else; a virgin
priest of verse. I shall feel conscience only for my art, and there's an end
on't!"

This reflection he had launched by way of justifying his flight with Joan;
by the time it assumed the tone of a manifesto, however, a new thought

[ 502 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

had occurred to him, so pernicious that he thrust it from his mind at once,
and yet so fascinating in its wickedness that it thrust itself back again and
again,

"Ah God, that I should e'en conceive it! And whilst the poor wretch
toils and shivers in some salvage's embrace to earn our passage! 'Twere a
vileness unthinkable, to repay such faith with faithlessness, even if I were
not in her debt for her ruin and my life!"

But for all he called the notion unthinkable, it was already thought, and
the more he reviled and railed against it, the more tenacious grew its hold
upon his fancy. He quite recognized, moreover, that one rarely wastes strong
condemnation on a deed one would not possibly consider doing. After forty-
five minutes or so he found himself saying, " 'Twas nowise her doing that
the great Moor split her, and poxed her, and got a black babe in her ravaged
womb; for all her opium and foul whoring, she is the same Joan Toast I
love, nor was her character disfigured in the least by Mitchell's purgatives
and abuse, that ruined her hair and teeth. Twas saintly faith and charity
to leave me this money, e'en though 'twas my own father she had it from,
and that by arrant fraud. What's more she is my wife: it matters naught
in the eyes of Heaven that Richard Sowter may not be empowered to make
marriages, or that I wed her under duress and she me under a false name,
or that in the eyes of the law she hath committed scores and hundreds of
adulteries, while our marriage hath not e'en been consummated! I must
wait for her return, and in the event she hath not poxed six poundsworth of
filthy salvages, I must in conscience give Father's money back to her, and
suffer his wrath after all-which will be so much the greater for her jilting
him! Thus runs our Christian code of honor, and though as poet I'm but
a guest, as't were, in Christendom, still a guest is bound to honor the rules
of the house."

Yet bound by what, if not the very code in question? It was a patently
falkcious argument. As best he could estimate, his time was running short:
he rose from the bed, put a heavy coat about his shoulders, and searched
out his ledger-book. Though he could not make out the verses in the dark,
he sang in his head the fierce conclusion of his satire and hugged the
precious notebook to his breast

But at the darkened exitway he was flooded with a sweat of shame. "Nay,
what am I doing! For all I'm more a poet now than ever in my life (and
thus obliged to no soul save my muse nor any institution save my craft),
and for all my pledge runs counter to the poet's creed and to the super-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 503 ]

sedent pledge made long before to Anna, yet damn it, I have given my
word, and sealed it with the rings!"

This was the final anguish. As he tiptoed down the stairs and out the
back door of the house, he saw his sister's drawn and hardening features;
as he stalked across the dark yard to the stables he recalled her presentation
of the ring, and his answering nervous vow to make her dowry flourish. By
the time he found some visitor's saddled horse and mounted, the image of
Joan Toast had somehow got blurred with that of Burlingame, on the
one hand, and his own cause merged in some way with Anna's on the
other, so that the two pairs stood in an opposition no less positive for its
being, presently at least, not quite identifiable.

A cold December wind swept over Cooke's Point and froze the tears on
the poet's cheeks. He pressed his heels into the horse and cried "May some
god strike me dead!" but clutched the bank note tightly lest he lose it in
the dark.

PART III: MALDENT EARNED

i: THE POET ENCOUNTERS A MAN WITH NAUGHT TO
LOSE, AND REQUIRES RESCUING

THROUGHOUT THE FROZEN FIFTEEN MILES BETWEEN COOKE*S POINT AND

the wharf at Cambridge, Ebenezer shivered not from the dark, cold wind
alone, which was broken by the woods his path wound through, nor again
from the simple self-revulsion that came and went in clonic spasms, and
between the seizures of which he could affirm the cardinal value of his
art and the corollary value of his independence; what shook him mainly
was his fear that Joan might follow, or that he would be recognized,
apprehended,, and returned to Maiden as a fugitive from his late inden-
ture. It was not yet dawn when he arrived at the county seat: the inn
and courthouse were dark, but in the creek-mouth loomed the Pilgrim,
her ports and masthead lanterns lit, and about her decks as well as on
the wharf men toiled by lamplight to fit her out for the turning of the
tide. Now nearly set, the waning moon hid all but the morning star,
which gleamed resplendent in the eastern sky: it pleased Ebenezer to
imagine that it hung over the meridian of London like the star of old over
Bethlehem, guiding him to the cradle of his destiny.

"There's a figure Henry Burlingame would make mincemeat of," he re-
flected, and tethering his horse, made his way nervously towards the wharf.
"I know not whether I am Magus, Messiah, Lazarus, or the Prodigal."

He had not gone far through the laboring stevedores before a hand fell
lightly on his shoulder and someone behind him asked, "Are ye quitting
Cooke's Point so soon> now, Master Laureate?"

Ebenezer nearly swooned. He spun around to face his captor, but the
man he saw, though distantly familiar, was no one whose intentions he
could confidently assume to be hostile. It was a dirty, ragged old fellow
with much untrimmed beard and no wig, thin as a skeleton, who had been
coiling lines nearby.

"Who are you?" he demanded, more anxious than indignant.

The fellow showed great surprise. "Ye do not even know me?" he cried,
as though the possibility were too good to be true.

[ 508 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Ebenezer scrutinized him uncomfortably: barring a metamorphosis
nothing short of miraculous, the man was not Burlingame, McEvoy, Sowter,
Smith, or Andrew Cooke, and neither his dress nor his occupation sug-
gested the county sheriff.

"I do not, nor why you accost me."

"Ah now, fear not, Mister Cooke, sir. I care not whether or wherefore
ye sail, nor would it matter if I did: ye can see yourself I'm but a wretched
wharf rat, and could not stop ye/'

"Then prithee let me go/' Ebenezer said. "I must find passage out to
yonder ship at once."

"Indeed?" The stevedore smiled a toothless smile and squeezed the
poet's arm ferociously. "Is Madame Cooke sailing with ye, or doth her
business keep her at Maiden?"

"Put by your hand and your impertinence this instant," Ebenezer
threatened, "or I'll have you sacked!" His voice was angry, but in truth he
was terrified at the prospect of apprehension. Already a gentleman standing
some distance behind the stevedore was watching them with interest— who
could say how much he knew, or what he might do?

"There's little ye can do to injure me/' the stevedore sneered. "At my
wages 'tis no threat to sack me, and I can't sink lower when I'm already on
the bottom. Ye might say I am a man with naught to lose, for I've lost it
all ere now."

"That is a pity," Ebenezer began, "but I do not see "

"Know that not long since I was a gentleman, Master Poet, with horse
and dog, wig and waistcoat, and sot-weed fields a-plenty in my charge; but
now, thanks to you, sir, 'tis a good day when my work so wearies me that I
sleep o'er the growling of my gut, and I go in tatters, and harvest naught
but vermin, chilblains, and blisters."

Ebenezer frowned incredulously. "Thanks to me?" Suddenly he recog-
nized his detainer and tingled with alarm. "Thou'rt Spurdance, my father's
overseer!"

"No other soul than he, that was deceived by your father, conspired
against by your unholy friend Tim Mitchell, and ruined by yourself!"

"Nay, nay!" Ebenezer protested. "There is more to't than you know!"
To his distress he saw the interested gentleman moving nearer. "'Twas
my poor innocence undid you!"

" 'Tis you, not I, that are benighted," insisted the stevedore. "I know ye
granted Maiden away in ignorance, and I know as well as you Tim Mitchell

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 5°9 1

is not Tim Mitchell, nor Susan Warren Susan Warren. But I know too old
Captain Mitchell, for all he was erst a wicked and unnatural rogue till
some years past, hath lately been in the power of your friend Tim! Tis Tim
Mitchell that is the grand high whoremaster, whoe'er he is and whoe'er he
works for; 'tis he that oversees the opium trade from New York to Carolina;
'tis he conspires with Monsieur Casteene and the Naked Indians; 'tis he
made the contracts with your father and the rest to turn their manors into
brothels and opium-houses, now the sot-weed market's fallen, and woe be-
tide the honest overseer that will have none oft!" He grasped Ebenezer's
other arm as well and crowded him backwards toward the bulkhead. "If he
be not ruined by some ninny like yourself, that knows not black from white,
he will be sacked by's crooked master; if he make the evil public, all his
neighbors will turn on him as one man, lest their pleasures be curtailed,
and if he dare make trouble for your nameless friend "

"Beware the bulkhead, sir!" the approaching gentleman cried, and drew
his short-sword.

"I cannot help it!" Ebenezer gasped, observing his peril. "This man "

"Release him!" the stranger commanded.

Spurdance glanced wildly at the sword. "I've naught to lose, damn ye!
This wretch and his devilish ally "

He spoke no more, for the stranger smote him across the face with the
flat of his sword. The blow sent him sprawling, and before he could collect
himself the sword-point was at his gullet.

"Not another word upon that topic," the stranger said: "neither now nor
later, else 'twill be your final word on earth. None save the dead have
naught to lose." To the assembled stevedores he said, "This madman as-
saulted Master Cooke here, the Laureate Poet of Maryland! If he's a friend
of yours, fetch him out of here before I set the sheriff on him."

Though in all likelihood he had been recognized already, Ebenezer was
alarmed at the proclamation of his name. Yet the stranger's manner quite
awed the stevedores: two of them helped the injured Spurdance move off
toward the inn, and another volunteered to ferry both gentlemen out to
the Pilgrim.

"I'faith, you've saved my life, sir!" Ebenezer said.

"My honor, Mister Cooke," the stranger replied, and clasped the poet's
proffered hand. He was a short, swarthy, and solidly proportioned man,
rather older than the poet; he wore his natural iron-grey hair and a short
beard of the same color, and his coat, boots, and breeches, though simply
designed, were of expensive-looking material.

[ j10 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Yonder is the Pilgrim's gig/' he declared, indicating a long, narrow row-
boat moored nearby. "I'm Nicholas Lowe of Talbot, bound for St. Mary's
City/'

But even as he identified himself his face was illuminated by the lantern
of a passing stevedore: Ebenezer recognized the bright, serpentlike eyes
and unfortunate teeth and gasped.

"Henry!"

"Nicholas is the name," Burlingame repeated, regarding him steadily.
"Nicholas Lowe, of Talbot County. Are you traveling alone, sir? I under-
stood you were a married man."

Ebenezer blushed. "I— I must try to explain that, Henry, when there's
time. But f God, 'twas not for my sake you smote Spurdance!"

"No other cause," Burlingame said. "A man may see his friend need,
but he will not see him bleed. And call me Nicholas, if you will, since
Nicholas is my name."

"The things he said of you, and of Father! They dizzy me!"

"I heard them: sleeveless poppycock."

But Ebenezer shook his head, "What cause had he to lie? As he himself
declared, he'd naught to lose."

"'Tis not enough for trust that a man hath naught to lose," Burlingame
replied, "if by virtue of that fact he hath somewhat to gain."

"Nor that he hath naught to gain," Ebenezer added bitterly, thinking
of the attack on Spurdance, "when he hath much to lose."

"Yet remove all prospects for gain and loss alike, and for all your witness
hath Truth for his mainsail, his rudder will be Whimsy and his breeze
inconstant Chance."

"You'd have me think no man is trustworthy, then?" Ebenezer asked.
"Methinks there is a motive in that cynicism!"

"What the saint calls cynicism," Burlingame said with a shrug, "the
worldly man calls sense. The fact oft is, all men can be trusted, but not
with the same things. Just as I might trust a sea captain with my life, but
not with my wife, so I trust Ben Spurdance's intention, but not his informa-
tion. 'Tis only fools and children, or wretches blind with love like poor
Joan Toast, that will trust a man with everything."

Ebenezer's face burned, and despite the cold he broke into a sweat. "You
know my shame!"

Burlmgame shrugged. "'Tis mankind's shame, is't not, that we are no
angels? What have I learnt, save that thou'rt human, and Joan Toa$t such a
fool as I described?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 511 ]

"And I another!" the poet wept. "What was't but love for you that all
these months hath scaled my eyes to your behavior, plugged my ears to
your own admissions and the dire reports of others, and so deranged my
reason that I justify your arrantest poltrooneries?"

"You believe that pitiful booby of an overseer." Burlingame sniffed
scornfully. "Why is't you do not swallow hook and leader as well, and be-
lieve those folk who say 'twas I brought Coode and Jacob Leisler together
and set off the entire string of revolutions? Why not believe the gentlemen
who make me chief lieutenant of the Pope or King Louis, or James the
Second, or William Penn, or the Devil himself?"

"I believe no one any longer," Ebenezer replied. "I believe naught in
the world save that Baltimore is the very principle of goodness, and Coode
the pure embodiment of evil."

"Then I must make your disillusionment complete," his tutor said. "But
now let's board our ship, or she'll make way without us." He started for
the Pilgrim's gig,, but Ebenezer tarried behind. "Come on; what holds you
back?"

Ebenezer covered his eyes. "Shame and fear; the same that urge me on!"

"They are the cantini&res of all great enterprise and must be lived with."

"Nay," Ebenezer said. "This talk hath clipped the wings of my resolve:
I cannot fly to England."

"Nor did I mean you to, but to St. Mary's City with me, on pressing
business."

Ebenezer shook his head. "Whate'er your business, right or wrong, I am
done with't."

Burlingame smiled. "And with your sister Anna as well? Tis she I hope
to meet in St. Mary's City."

"Anna in Maryland! What new enormity is this?"

"We've not time for't here and now," laughed Burlingame, and led
Ebenezer by the arm toward the waiting gig. "See yonder how the Pilgrim
slacks her pendant? The tide is set to turn."

For a moment longer the poet resisted the familiar, urgent spell of his
former tutor, but the news of Anna— though he allowed for its being alto-
gether false—was too astonishing and intriguing to let pass; while they were
being ferried out into the creek-mouth he fingered absently at his ring, as
always when his thoughts dwelt on his sister, and it was with a little shock
of regret that he felt fishbone instead of silver.

"What must Joan be doing now?" he wondered, perspiring afresh to

[ J12 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

think, and slipped the fishbone ring into his pocket lest it elicit questions
from Burlingame.

Since he carried no other luggage than his ledger-book, it took but a
few minutes for Ebenezer to sign on as a passenger aboard the Pilgrim
and pay his fare to the officer on deck. Whatever other passengers the ship
carried having long since signed aboard and taken to their berths, the gig
was hauled in, sail made, and the anchor weighed and catted; soon the
Pilgrim had gained the Choptank channel, and with a ten-knot breeze
astern, by the time the sun's rim edged the flat horizon she had left
Castlehaven Point to larboard and was standing for the open waters of
the Chesapeake. Both to warm himself and to avoid seeing Cooke's Point
again, Ebenezer insisted that they go below, and demanded at once to
hear whatever news Burlingame had of Anna.

"From what you told me in the Cambridge winehouse," he said tiredly,
"she is more twin to Joan Toast than to me. Yet, if in sooth she hath
crossed the ocean, methinks her quest is not so chaste as Joan's. What have
you learnt of her, Henry?"

"All in its place," said Burlingame. "To commence, you really must call
me Nicholas Lowe. Your friend and tutor Burlingame is no more, but hath
perished by his own hand/'

"Nay, Henry/' Ebenezer waved his hand wearily. "I am surfeited with
poses and intrigues, and care not how or wherefore thou'rt disguised."

"This case is different," his friend persisted. "Nick Lowe's my legal name,
I swear't. D'you recall what business it was first fetched me to Dorset,
other than seeing you to Maiden? Twas to find a Mr. William Smith, that
had in his keeping some fragment of John Smith's secret history."

"Marry, that seems a decade past! You mean to say you got the papers
from your friend the cooper, and they proved your name is Nicholas Lowe?"

"Slowly, slowly," Burlingame laughed. " 'Tis rather knottier than that.
I've yet to lay rny hands upon the papers, but when I first learned they
were in Smith's possession, I asked him as if from simple curiosity what
befell Sir Henry 'Burlingame in that final portion of the history, and in
particular whether any mention was made in't of his issue. His answer was
that as best he could recall, naught happened to Burlingame at all: John
Smith contrived in some wise to take the salvage doxy's maidenhead, and
both men returned to Jamestown shortly after."

Ebenezer frowned. "What's this of maidenheads? The last I read was
the piece you robbed the Jesuit of, that ended with their capture."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 5J3 ]

"That is the pity oft," Burlingame replied. "What the cooper hath is
not Smith's history at all, but a piece of The Privie Joumall of Sir Henry
Burlingame, that tells of Smith's adventure with Pocahontas. Twas the first
half oft you read in the carriage to Plymouth. Can you see the double
import of this news?"

''I see it means your search was fruitless, unless there are, more Smiths in
Maryland to threaten with castration."

Burlingame laughed. "You little dream the relevance of your words!
But aye, that is one implication oft: so far as I know, Smith's history ends
where last we read; the rest either is lost or ne'er was writ, and Sir Henry's
name appears no more in the records. When I learned this I called my
search a failure, abandoned hope of proving my identity, and resolved to
create one from the outside in. I went to Colonel Henry Lowe of Talbot,
that once years ago I saved from Tom Pound's pirates and, after explaining
who I was, prevailed upon him to save my life in turn by owning me as a
son. Thus was Nicky Lowe born, ex nihilo and without travail!"

"I must own I scarcely see the need for't," Ebenezer said, "much less
how 'twould save your life. But Heav'n knows 'tis not your first mysterious
action."

"If you think it mysterious, reflect again on the fact that 'tis not Smith's
history the cooper hath, but Sir Henry's Privie JournalL Do you recall how
I came by the first half of that journal? 'Twas when I stole Coode's letters
in England from his courier Ben Ricaud! The Privie Journdl was John
Coode's possession, not Baltimore's!"

In spite of his disinclination to show any great interest in Burlingame's
affairs, Ebenezer could not conceal his curiosity at this disclosure.

"At first, after what I'd learned from Ben Spurdance," Burlingame went
on, "it seemed no great wonder to me that Coode should trust Bill Smith
with the papers, since Smith was Captain Mitchell's chief lieutenant on
the Eastern Shore. But the more I reflected on't, the muddier it grew:
why was the cooper's name included in the list I'd got from Baltimore, if
he was one of Coode's company? And how explain the marvelous coinci-
dence that Coode, as well as Baltimore, entrusted his papers to men of the
surname Smith? 'Twas not till some days after your wedding, when I
chanced to mention the matter to Spurdance at the Cambridge tavern, I
learned that Coode had ne'er given Smith the papers in the first place— the
cooper had long since stolen 'em from Ben Spurdance. 'Tis Spurdance is
Coode's lieutenant, and 'twas on the strength of this prize that Bill Smith
became Baltimore's; in fact, 'twas just this coup decided Baltimore to di-

[514] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

v*de his precious Assembly Journal into halves— not thirds, as we supposed
—and to entrust it to two other friends of his named Smith. He hath a bent
for such theatrics, and the move hath cost him dearly/'

"Then Smith is Baltimore's man and Spurdance Coode's?" Ebenezer
asked incredulously, "How can that be, when the one is such a thorough-
going varlet and the other, for all his temper, an honest man? And how is't
an agent of Baltimore's is trafficking in whores and opium for Captain
Mitchell— which is to say, for Coode? La, methinks expediency, and not
truth, is this tale's warp, and subterfuge its woof, and you've weaved it
with the shuttle of intrigue upon the loom of my past credulity! In short,
'tis creatured from the whole cloth, that even I can see doth not hang all
in a piece. Tis a fabric of contradictories."

"It is indeed," Burlingame conceded, "if approached with the assump-
tions we both have steered by. But we are like a Swedish naviagator I
knew once in Barcelona that had dreamed up a clever way of reckoning
longitude by the stars and was uncommon accurate in all respects save one:
to his dying day he could not remember whether Antares was in Scorpius
and Arcturus in the Herdsman, or the reverse. The consequence oft was,
he reckoned his longitude by Antares with azimuths he'd sighted from
Arcturus, and ran his ship into the Goodwin Sands! In plain language, I
knew Mitchell had support from some powerful outside agency whose mo-
tive was more sinister than mere profit and, since his traffic is wicked, I
assumed from the first that Coode was at the bottom oft. 'Twas not till
this matter of Spurdance and Bill Smith that alternatives occurred to

^ , 7>

me

Ebenezer had been slouched wearily in his seat, but now he sat upright.
"Surely thou'rt not about to tell me Baltimore's involved in Mitchell's
traffic!"

Burlingame nodded soberly. "Not merdy involved, Eben: he is the heart,
brains, and hand oft! There is no limit to the man's ambitions, or to the
lengths he'll go to realize 'em. His plan, no less, is so to enervate the English
in America with opium, and friendly towns of salvages with the pox, that
anon the several governments will fall to the French and the Naked
Indians of Monsieur Casteene. Thereupon the Pope hath pledged himself
to intervene and unite all the colonies into one great bailiwick of Roman-
ism, which all men know hath shot its bolt in Europe, and Baltimore, as
reward for his services, will be crowned Emperor of America for his lifetime
aid a holy Catholic saint upon his deathl"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR f 5*5 ^

"But 'tis absurd!" Ebenezer protested, " Tis as if you claimed that God
was in fact the principle of evil, and Lucifer the principle of good!"

Burlingame shrugged his shoulders. 'That Baltimore stands- behind
Mitchell I am certain, and viewed through the lens of this knowledge, the
entire history of the Province takes on a different aspect: who knows but
what old William Claiborne was a hero, along with Penn and Governor
Fendall and the rest, and Baltimore the monster all along? All I know of
Coode is that he hath worked counter to every government in Maryland:
did it e'er occur to you that they all might have been as corrupt as Baltimore
himself, and that Coode, like Milton's rebel Satan, might more deserve
our sympathy than our censure?"

Ebenezer pressed his palm to his forehead and shuddered. "In the
absence of facts, I suppose, one must allow all possibilities— but the prospect
staggers me!"

" Tis not that the facts are absent, after all— I have been Baltimore's
chief intriguer these four years, and am privy to more facts than ever Sallust
knew of Catiline. The difficulty is, e'en on the face of 'em the facts are
dark— doubly so if you grant, as wise men must, that an ill deed can be
done with good intent, and a good with ill; and triply if you hold right
and wrong to be like windward and leeward, that vary with standpoint,
latitude, circumstance, and time. History, in short, is like those waterholes
I have heard of in the wilds of Africa: the most various beasts may drink
there side by side with equal nourishment."

"But what is this," Ebenezer asked, "except to say the facts avail one
naught in making judgments? Is- 1 not that very notion I affirmed last fall
in Cambridge, at the cost of my estate?"

"Not at all," Burlingame replied, "for the court judge dons his values
with his robe and wig, that are made for him by the legion of the judged,
and the jury hath no other office save to rule on facts. Besides which, they
see the litigants face to face and hear their testimony, and so can judge
their character; but for all his notoriety I ne'er have met the man who hath
seen John Coode face to face, nor, despite his fame and influence and
the great trust he hath placed in me, have I myself ever seen Lord Baltimore,
any more than you have."

"What! How can that be?"

Burlingame answered that all his communication with the Lord Proprie-
tary, even when they lived under the same roof, had been through mes-
sengers, for Baltimore had confined himself to his chambers on the grounds
of illness.

[ 5*6 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

'There is no way to lay eyes upon Baltimore now," he said, "but I have
lately sworn myself a solemn vow: if there lives in fact such a creature as
this John Coode— that hath been Catholic priest, Church-of-England
minister, sheriff, captain, colonel, general, and Heav'n alone knows what
else— I shall confront him face to face and learn once for all what cause he
stands for! Tis to seek him out, and Auna as well, I am en route to St.
Mary's City."

At the mention of his sister's name all thoughts of Maryland politics
vanished from the poet's mind, and he demanded once again to know why
she and Andrew had come to the province so long before their scheduled
visit.

'Tour father's cause will be clear/' Burlingame said, "once I've told you
that they did not make the voyage together. 'Tis to seek her out he's come,
and haply to negotiate with Mitchell. He little dreamt, when last I saw
him, that he had no more estate in Maryland—- but haply he hath heard
the news by now. . . ."

"Then Spurdance's charge is true, that my father is in league with
Mitchell!"

"Not yet, to the best of my knowledge, but 'twill be true enough anon.
What with the war, the want of foreign markets, the unseasonable weather,
the scarcity of ships and hardy plants, the fly, the ground worm, the horn-
worm, the house-bum, the frostbite, and the perils of sea and enemies, your
sot-weed planter nowadays is in wretched straits. Some have sold half their
landholdings to clear the rest; some have turned to other crops, scarce worth
the work of growing; some have moved to Pennsylvania, where the soil
hath not as yet been leached and drained of spirit; and some, that have
no love for these alternatives, have turned from planting to more lucrative
fields. I have cause to think old Andrew had an audience on this topic with
Lord Baltimore ere he sailed, else he'd no reason to come straight from
Piscataway to Captain Mitchell's, where Joan and I caught sight of him
two days past. 'Twas then we fled together— she to warn you of his presence,
I to make my bargain with Colonel Henry Lowe and meet the twain of
you here. I could stay no more with Mitchell, not alone because I'd learned
my search was hopeless, but also because the real Tim Mitchell, so I
have heard, is en route to the Province. What's more, the Jesuit priest
Thomas Smith, that we called upon near Oxford, hath complained to Lord
Baltimore of my abusing him, and on all sides I was looked at with
suspicion."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 517 ]

"But damn it!" Ebenezer cried. 'What of my sister? Where is she now,
and why hath she come to Maryland?"

"You know the cause as well as I," said Burlingame.

"That she loves you!" Ebenezer groaned, "Ah God, how pleased that
news would once have made me! But now I know you for the very essence
of carnality, I feel as Mother Ceres must have felt, when Pluto took
Proserpine for his bride. And galled— i'faith, it galls me sore to think how
she praised my innocence, joined hers to mine there in the London post-
house, and sealed our virgin vows with her silver ring! And all was guile
and cruel deceit: you'd long since had her maidenhead in the summer-house,
and swived her behind my back in London, and e'en that very day of my
departure, ere my business with Ben Bragg was done, the twain of you
had billed and cooed all shameless in the public view. Hypocrisy! What
lewd delight she must have taken in swearing to me she would be chaste,
when, even as she swore she still felt your hands upon her, and yearned
for one last tumble on your bed! Tis clear now why that last farewell
discomfited me, and the matter of the ring: she was so taken with rut
for you, that stood disguised not ten yards distant, she fancied 'twas
you whose hand she toyed with, and the fancy near made her swoon!"

"Enough!" Burlingame ordered. "If you believe this poppycock in sooth,
thou'rt not so much innocent as stupid!"

"You deny it?" the poet cried. "You deny 'twas your lewd connection
my father learned of in St. Giles and sacked you for?"

"Nay, not entirely."

"And those foul boasts in the Cambridge tavern!" Ebenezer pressed
angrily. "That she hath begged you to have at her, and discovered her
priviest secret's to your eyes, and oft gone mad with joy in your lubricious
games— do you deny these now?"

"They are true enough in substance," Burlingame sighed, "but what you
fail to see "

"Then where lies my stupidity, save in esteeming her too much to see
'twas common lust for you that fetched her to our rooms in Thames Street,
and that this same monstrous lust hath brought her half round the world to
warm your bed?"

"No more, you fool!" exclaimed Burlingame. "'Tis love in sooth hath
driven her hither, or lust, if you prefer; but love or lust— i'Christ, Eben!
—have you not remarked these many years 'tis you that are its object?"

2: A LAYMAN'S PANDECT OF GEMINOLOGY
COMPENDED BY HENRY BURLINGAME, COSMOPHILIST

EBENEZER'S MOUTH OPENED; HIS FEATURES CONTORTED WONDROUSLY.

"Dear Heav'nly Father, Henry! What have you said?"

Burlingame turned his fist in his palm and frowned at the deck as he
spoke. "Your sister is a driven and fragmented spirit, friend; the one half
of her soul yearns but to fuse itself with yours, whilst the other half recoils
at the thought. Tis neither love nor lust she feels for you, but a prime
and massy urge to coalescence, which is deserving less of censure than
of awe. As Aristophanes maintained that male and female are displaced
moieties of an ancient whole, and wooing but their vain attempt at
union, so Anna, I long since concluded, repines willy-nilly for the dark
identity that twins share in the womb, and for the well-nigh fetal closeness
of their childhood."

"I shudder at the thought!" Ebenezer whispered.

"As well doth Anna— so much so, that her fancy entertains it only in
disguise— yet no other thought than this impelled her to me in the summer-
house! Twas quite in the middle of a fine May night; the night of your
sixteenth birthday, and though the time f or't was some days past, a shower
of meteors was flashing from Aquarius. I had lingered late outside to watch
these falling stars and plot their courses on a map of my own devising; so
engrossed was I in the work that when Anna came up behind — "

"No more!" cried Ebenezer. 'Tou took her maidenhead, God curse you,
and there's an end on't!"

"Quite otherwise/' Burlingame replied. "We spent some hours discussing
you, that were asleep in your chamber. Anna likened you to Phosphor, the
morning star, and herself to Hesper, the mortal star of evening, and when
I told her those twin stars were one and the same, and not a star at all but
the planet Venus, the several portents of this fact near made her swoon!
The sap was risen in her, any man could see. We tarried long in the summer-
house that night, and long on many a balmy night thereafter; yet always,
I will swear't, I pleased her in no wise save as your proxy."

"I'God, and you think this argues to your credit?"

Burlingame smiled. "There are two facts you've yet to swallow, Eben.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 519 ]

The first is that I love no part of the world, as you might have guessed, but
the entire parti-colored whole, with all her poles and contradictories. Coode
and Baltimore alike I am enamored of, whatever the twain might stand for;
and you know already what various ground hath held my seed. For this same
reason 7twas never you I loved, nor yet your sister Anna, but the twain in-
separably, and could lust for neither alone. Whence issues the second fact,
which is, that de'il the times her blood waxed warm the while she spoke of
you, and de'il the times I kissed her as the symbol for you both, and played
the sad games of her invention, yet your sister is a virgin still for aught
of me!"

He laughed at Ebenezer's shock and disbelief. "Aye, now, that wants
some chewing, doth it not? Think with what relish, as a child, she would
play Helen to your Paris, but ever call you Pollux by mistake! Recall that
day in Thames Street when you chided her for lack of suitors and as a
tease proposed me for the post "

Ebenezer clutched his throat. "Marry!"

"Her reply/7 Burlingame went on, "was that the search for beaux was
fruitless, inasmuch as the man she loved most had the bad judgment to be
her twin! And reflect, in the light of what I've told you, on this matter of
your mother's silver ring, that Anna gave you in the posthouse: did you
know she was wont to read the letters ANNE B as ANN and EB conjoined?
Can a poet be blind to the meaning of that gift and of the manner of its
giving?"

"To contemplate it is to risk the loss of my supper/' Ebenezer groaned,

"yet I must own there is some sense in all you say " His face hardened.

"Save that she's still a maid! That's too much!"

His friend shrugged. "Believe't or no. Well find her anon, I pray, and
you may get a physician's word for't if you please."

"But what you bragged of in the Cambridge tavern!"

"Many shuffle the cards that do not play. I could as easily have had at
you in Bill Mitchell's barn, but the truth is, as I said before, 'tis not the
one nor the other I crave, but the twain as one. Haply the day will
come when poor dear Anna's secret lust will get the better of her reason
and your own likewise (which, deny't as you may, is plain to me!) : if such
a day dawn, why then perchance I'll come upon you sack a sack as did
Catullus on the lovers, and like that nimble poet pin you to your work-
nay, skewer you both like twin squabs on a spit!"

The poet shuddered. "This is too much to assimilate, Henry: Coode a
hero; my father in Maryland searching for Anna and leagued with the villain

[ 520 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Baltimore; Anna herself yet virginal; and you, after all that hath transpired—
you wholly innocent and still my friend! And marry come up, you make
matters no simpler when you declare my sister's lust to be reciprocal! Such
a prurient notion hath never crossed my mind!"

Burlingame raised his eyebrows. "Then you quite deceived your servants
at St. Giles. Mrs. Twigg was wont to tell me "

"She was a foul-fancied harridan!"

"Why, they even had a rhyme, the which "

"I know their scurrilous rhyme, whatever it be/' Ebenezer said impa-
tiently. "I have heard a dozen such, since I was small. Nor is your wicked
imputation foreign to me, if you must know, albeit I'm not a little shocked
to hear you share it. Poor Anna and I since birth have breathed in an air of
innuendo, the which hath oft and oft caused us to blush and lower our
eyes. Since I was ten our father's household hath assumed the worst of us,
for no other reason than that we were twins. Twas Anna's ill luck her
body blossomed at an early age, and e'en her fondest girl friends—
e'en that same Meg Bromly who took your letters to her from Thames
Street— they all declared her ripening was my work and drove Anna to tears
with their whispering! All this, mind, on no grounds whate'er save our
twinship, and the fact that unlike many brothers and sisters we never quar-
reled, but preferred each other's company to the concupiscent world's! I
cannot grasp it."

"Then for all thy Cambridge learning," Burlingame laughed, "thou'rt
not by half the scholar your sister is! When first I guessed her trouble, long
ere she saw't herself, we launched a long and secret enquiry into the subject
of twins— their place in legend, religion, -and the world. Twas my intent by
this investigation not so much to cure Anna's itch— which I was not at all
persuaded was an ailment— as 'twas to understand it, to see it in's perspective
in the tawdry history of the species, if we might, and so contrive the most
enlightened way to deal with it. I need not say my interest was as heartfelt
as her own; her oft-sworn love for me, I could see clearly, was love for you,
diverted and transmogrified by virtuous conscience. When she would run
to me in the summer-house, 'twas as a jilted maiden runs to a convent and
becomes the bride of Christ, and I sorely feared, if her case were not soon
physicked, 'twould bereave her altogether of her reason or else drive her to
some surrogate not so tender of her honor as was I."

"Dear God!"

"For this reason I led her on," Burlingame continued. "I declared my
love for her— half in truth, you understand— and together we explored the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 5^1 ]

misty land of legends, both Christian and pagan; the stories brought back
by mariners from far exotic places; and the literatures of classic and vulgar
tongues. Four years we studied—from your fourteenth to your eighteenth
year— and all in secret. On the face oft our enquiry was beyond reproach,
and I yearned for you to join us, but Anna would have none oft, though
she herself could not say why. 1'faith, Eben, what a tireless scholar is your
sister!" He shook his head in reminiscent awe. "I could not find her volumes
enough of voyage and travels, or heathen rites and practices: she would
fall on 'em like a lioness on her prey, devour 'em in great bites, and thirst
for more! I'd wager my life on't, at seventeen years she was the world's
foremost authority on the subject of twins, and is today."

"And I knew naught oft?" Ebenezer shook his head and laughed
uncomprehendingly. "But what was the fruit of all this secret labor? What
is there to know of us twins, save that we were conceived in a single
swiving?"

"Why, that Gemini is your sign and springtime your season," Burlingame
replied.

"It wants no scholarship to hit on that. Tis common knowledge."

"As is the fact that springtime— and Maytime in particular— is the season
of fertility and the year's first thunderstorms."

"Don't teasel" the poet said irritably. "This day and night have been
my life's most miserable, and I am near dead from shock and want of sleep,
to say naught of misery. If all your study ploughed up no lore save this,
have done with't and let us rest. 'Tis all impertinence."

"On the contrary," Burlingame declared. "So pertinent are our findings,,
methinks you'd as well give o'er the search for Anna unless you hear 'em:
'tis better to be lost than saved by the wrong Messiah." His manner and
tone grew serious. "You know that spring is the season of storms and fer-
tility, but do you know, as doth your sister, that of all the things our rustic
forebears feared, the three that most alarmed them were thunder, lightning,
,and twins? Did you know thou'rt worshipped the whole world over, whether
by murther or by godhood, if not both? Through the reverence of the most
benighted salvage runs this double thread of storms and fornication, and
the most enlightened sages have seen in you the embodiment of dualism,
polarity, and compensation. Thou'rt the Heavenly Twins, the Sons of
Thunder, the Dioscuri, the Boanerges; thou'rt the twin principles of male
and female, mortal and divine, good and evil, light and darkness. Your tree
is the sacred oak, the thunder-tree; your flower is the twin-leaved mistletoe,
seat of the oak tree's life, whose twin white berries betoken the celestial

[ 1J22 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

semen and are thus employed to rejuvenate the old, fructify the barren,
and turn the shy maid's fancies to lusty thoughts of love. Your bird is the
red cock Chanticleer, singer of light and love. Your emblems are legion:
twin circles represent you, whether suggested by the sun and moon, the
wheels of the solar chariot, the two eggs laid by Leda, the nipples of
Solomon's bride, the spectacles of Love and Knowledge, the testicles of
maleness, or the staring eyes of God. Twin acorns represent you, both be-
cause they are the thunder-tree's seed and because their two parts fit like
male and female. Twin mountain peaks represent you, the breasts of
Mother Nature; the Maypole and its ring are danced round in your
honor. Your sacred letters are A, C, H, I, M, O, P, S, W, X, and Z "

"rChrist!" Ebenezer broke in. " Tis half the alphabet!"

"Each hath its separate import," Burlingame explained, "yet all have
common kinship with swiving, storms, and the double face of Nature. Your
A, for example, is the prime and mightiest letter of the lot— a god in itself,
and worshipped by heathen the great world round. It represents the forked
crotch of man, the source of seed, and also, by's peak and by's cross-line,
the union of twain into one, that I'll speak of anon. When you set two A's
cheek by jowl you see the holy nippled paps of Mother Earth, as well as
the sign of the holy Asvins, the twin charioteers of Eastern lore. Your C
betokens the crescent moon, that in turn is held to resemble man's carnal
sword, unsheathed and rising to the fray; two C's entwined are the union of
Heaven and Earth, or Christ and his earthly church "

"In HeavVs name, Henry, what are these riddles thou'rt flooding me
with?"

"Anon, anon," Burlingame said. "Your H portrays the same happy union
of two into one: 'tis the zodiac sign for Gemini; the bridge 'twixt the twin
pillars of light and dark, love and learning, or what have you; 'tis also the
eighth letter, and inasmuch as 8 is the mystic mark of redemption (by
virtue of its copulating circles), 'tis no surprise that H is the emblem of
atonement— the making of two into one."

"Again this mystery of twos and ones!" the poet protested.

" 'Tis no mystery when you know about I and O," said Burlingame. "In
every land and time folk have maintained that what we see as two are the
fallen halves of some ancient one—that night and day, Heaven and Earth,
or man and woman were long since severed by their sinful natures, and
that not till Kingdom Come will the fallen twain be a blessed one. Tis
this lies 'neath the tale of Eve and Adam, and Plato's fable, and the fall of
Lucifer, and Heav'n knows how many other lovely lies; 'tis this the Lord

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 523 ]

Himself refers to, in the second epistle of Pope Clement: He declares His
Kingdom shall come When the two shell be one, and the outside as the
inside, and the male with the female. Thus all men reverence the act of
fornication as portraying the fruitful union of opposites: the Heavenly
Twins embraced; the Two as One!"

Ebenezer shivered.

"Your I and O are plainly then discovered," Burlingame said with a
smile: "the one is male, the other female; together they are the great god
lo of Egypt, the ring on the maidens* merry Maypole, the acorn in its cup,
the circumcised prepuce of the Jew, the genital letters P and Q— and the
silver seal ring Anna slipped upon your finger in the posthouse!"

TGodl"

"As for the others, your M is the twin mountain breasts I spoke of; S
is the copulation of twin Cs face to face, and is sprung as well from the
sacred Z; W— the double-you, as M is the double-me— W, I say7 is a pair of
Vs sack a sack: 'tis thus the sign of the Heavenly Twins of India, called
Vritrahana, and the third part of the Druids' invocation to their god, the
whole of which was I.O.W. X, like A and H, is the joining of Two into
One, and as such hath been venerated since long ere the murther of
Christ; Z is the zigzag lightning flash of Zeus, or whatever god you please,
and is ofttimes flanked, in ancient emblems, by the circles of the Heavenly
Twins "

"Enough!" the poet cried. "This dizzies me! What is the message oft,
and what hath it to do with Anna and me?"

"Why, naught in the world," Burlingame responded, "save to show you
how deep in the marrow of man runs this fear and reverence for twins, and
their connection with coitus and the weather. All over Africa the birth of
twins is followed by dances of the lewdest sort: sometimes 'tis thought to
prove the mother an adultress, since husbands generally get one babe at a
time; other folk think the mother hath been swived by the Holy Spirit, or
that the father hath an inordinate lingam. In sundry isles of the western
ocean 'tis common for the salvages to throw coffee beans at the walls of a
house where twins are born; they believe that otherwise one must die,
inasmuch as twins break the laws of chastity while still embraced in their
mother's womb! In divers lands no living twins can be found, for the
reason that one is always slain at birth; but murthered or not, they are
worshiped in every place, and have been since time out of mind. The
old Egyptians had their Taues and Taouis, the twins of Scrapeum at
Memphis, as well as the sisters Tathautis and Taebis, the ibis-wardens of

[ ?2A ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Thebes; in India reigned Yama and Yami, and the holy Asvins I spoke of
earlier, that drew the Heavenly Chariot; the Persians worshipped Ahriman
and Ormuz; the ancient myths of the Hebrews tell of Huz and Buz,
Huppim and Muppim, Gog and Magog, and Bne and Baroq, to say naught
of Esau and Jacob, Cain and Abel— or as the Mohammedans have it, Cain
and Alcima and Abel and Jumella "

"Ah!" Ebenezer exclaimed.

"Some held," Burlingame went on, "that Lucifer and Michael were
twins, as are most gods of Light and Darkness; and for the selfsame cause
the old Edessans of Mesopotamia, who erst had worshipped Monim and
Aziz, were wont to regard e'en Jesus and Judas as hatched from a single

"Incredible!"

"No more than that God and Satan themselves "

"I don't believe it!" Ebenezer protested.

"Tis not a question of your belief," laughed Burlingame, "but of the
fact that other wights think it true; 'tis but a retelling of the tale of Set and
Horns, or Typhon and Osiris,, whom some Egyptians took for twins and
others merely for rivals. But I was coming to the Greeks . . ."

'You may pass o'er them," sighed the poet. "I know of Castor and
Pollux, the sons of light and thunder, and as well of Helen and Clytemnes-
tra, that were hatched with 'em from Leda's eggs."

"Then you must know too of Lynceus and Idas, that slew the Dioscuri;
of Amphion and Zethus, that sacked and rebuilt Troy; of Heracles and
Iphikles, that are twins in this tale and half-brothers in that, and of Hesper
and Phosphor, the morning and evening stars."

"And now you'll go to Rome, I'll wager, and speak of Romulus and
Remus?"

"Ayer" said Burlingame, "to say naught of Picumnus and Pilumnus, or
Mutumnus and Tutumnus. 'Twas the great respect accorded these classic
twins that carried them into the Christian Church, which had the good
sense to canonize 'em in lieu of fighting back. Hence the Greek and Roman
Catholics pray to Saints Romolo and Remo, Saints Kastoulos and Poly-
euctes, and e'en St. Dioscoros; the more superstitious amongst them go yet
farther and regard as twins Saints Crispin and Crispian, Florus and Laurus,
Marcus and Marcellianus, Protasius and Gervasius "

"A surfeit!" cried the poet. "There is a surfeit!"

'You have not heard the best of all," Burlingame insisted. "They will
hold Saints John and James to be twins as well, and e'en Saints Jude and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 525 ]

Thomas, inasmuch as Thomas means 'a twin/ Til not trouble you with
Tryphona and Tryphosa, that Paul salutes in's Epistle to the Romans, but
turn instead to the Aryan heroes Baltram and Sintram, or Cautes and
Cautopates, and the northern tales of Sieglinde and Siegmunde, the
incestuous parents of Siegfried, or Baldur, the Norseman's spirit of Light,
and his enemy, dark Loki, that slew him with a branch of mistletoe!"

"Tis a hemisphere overridden with godly twins!" Ebenezer marveled.

Burlingame smiled. "Yet it wants twin hemispheres to make a whole:
when Anna and I turned our eyes to westward, we found in the relations
of the Spanish and English adventurers no less a profusion of Heavenly
Twins, revered by sundry salvages; and the logs of divers voyages to the
Pacific and Indian Oceans were no different. Methinks there is not a tribe
upon the planet that hath not the like of the Boanerges! Old Cortez, when
he raped the glorious Aztecs, found them worshiping Quetzalcoatl and
Tezcatlipoca, as their neighbors reverenced Hun-hun-ahpu and Vukub
hun-ahpu. Pizarro and his cohorts, had they been curious enough to ask,
would have found in the southern pantheon such twins as Pachakamak
and Wichoma, Apocatequil and Piquerao, Tamendonar^ and Arikut6, Karu
and Rairu, Tiri and Karu, Ken and Kame. Why, I myself, enquiring here
and there among the Indians of these parts, have leamt from the
Algonkians that they reverence Menabozho and Chokanipok, and from the
Naked Indians of the north that they pray to Juskeha and Tawiskara. From
the Jesuit missionaries I have learnt of a nation called the Zuni, that
worship Ahaiyuta and Matsailema; of another called Navaho, that worship
Tobadizini and Nayenezkani; of another called Maidu, that worship
Pemsanto and Onkoito; of another called Kwakiutl, that worship Kanigyilak
and Nemokois; of another called Awikeno, that worship Mamasalanik and
Noakaua— all of them twins. Moreover, there is in far Japan a band of hairy
dwarfs that pray to the twins Shi-acha and Mo-acha, and amongst the gods
of the southern ocean reign the great Si Adji Donda Hatahutan and his
twin sister, Si Topi Radja Na Uasan . . ."

" 'Tis your scheme to drive me mad!"

"Nay, that is their name, I swear't: Si Adji Donda Hatahutan and
his "

"No matter! No matter!" Ebenezer shook his head as though to jar his
senses into order. "You have proved to the very rocks and clouds that twin-
worship is no great rarity in this earth!"

Burlingame nodded acknowledgment. "Sundry pairs of these twins are
opposites and sworn enemies—such as Satan and God, Ahriman and Ormuz,

[ 526 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

or Baldur and Loki— and their fight portrays the struggle of Light with
Darkness, the murther of Love by Knowledge, or what have you. Sundry
others represent the equivocal state of man, that is half angel and half
beast: thus with Hesper and Phosphor, Zethus and Amphion,, Castor
and Polydeuces, Iphikles and Heracles, or Judas and Jesus> the first of each
pair is mortal and the second divine. Still others are the gods of fornication,
like Mutumnus and Tutumnus, or Picumnus and Pilumnus; if less than
gods, they yet may be remembered for incestuous lust, like Cain and his
Alcima, and even be honored for swiving up a hero, as were Sieglinde and
Siegmunde. How Anna loved the Siegfried tales!"

So heavy with revelations was the poet, he could only wave his hand
against this remark.

"Yet whether their bond be love or hate or death," Burlingame con-
cluded, "almost always their union is brilliance, totality,, apocalypse — a thing
to yearn and tremble for! Tis this union Anna desires with all her heart,
howe'er her mind disguise it; 'tis this hath brought her halfway round the
globe to seek you out, and your father to fetch her home if he can find her.
Tis this your own heart bends to, will-ye, nill-ye, as a flower to the light,
to make you one and whole and nourished as ne'er since birth; or as a
needle to the lode, to direct you to the harbor of your destinyl And 'tis this
I yearn for too, and naught besides: I am Suitor of Totality, Embracer of
Contradictories, Husband to all Creation, the Cosmic Lover! Henry More
and Isaac Newton are my pimps and aides-de-chambre; I have known my
great Bride part by splendrous part, and have made love to her disjecta
membra, her sundry brilliant pieces; but I crave the Whole—the tenon in
the mortise, the jointure of polarities, the seamless universe— whereof you
twain are token, in coito! I have no parentage to give me place and aim
in Nature's order: very well— I am outside Her, and shall be Her lord and
spouse!"

Burlingame was so aroused by his own rhetoric that at the end of this
speech he was pacing and gesturing about the cabin, his voice raised to the
pitch and volume of an Enthusiast's; even had Ebenezer not been too
dismayed for skepticism, he could scarcely have questioned his former
tutor's sincerity. But he was stunned, as well with recognition as with appall:
he clutched his head and moaned.

Burlingame stopped before him, "Surely you'll not deny your share of
guilt?"

The poet shook his head. Til not deny that the soul of man is deep and
various as the reach of Heav'n," he replied, "or that he hath in germ the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 527 ]

sum of poles and possibilities. But I am stricken by what you say of me and

Anna!"

"What have I said, but that thou'rt human?"

Ebenezer sighed. " Tis quite enough."

By this time the sun was bright in the eastern sky, and the Pilgrim stood
well down the Bay for Point Lookout and St. Mary's City; the other pas-
sengers were awake and stirring about their quarters. At Burlingame's sug-
gestion they fastened their scarves and coats and went on deck, the better
to speak in private.

"How is't you know Anna to be in St. Mary's? Why did she not come
straight to Maiden?"

" 'Tis your man Bertrand's fault," Burlingame answered and, laughing
at Ebenezer's bewilderment and surprise, confessed that when he had dis-
patched Bertrand from Captain Mitchell's to St. Mary's City back in
September, he had charged the valet not only to retrieve the Laureate's
trunk but if possible to claim it in the guise of the Laureate himself, the
better to throw John Coode off the scent while they made their way to
Maiden. "To this end I rashly loaned him your commission "

"My commission! Then 'tis true you stole it from me back in England!"

Burlingame shrugged. " Twas I authored it, was't not? Besides, would it
not have gone worse with you had Pound been certain of your identity?
In any case, there was some peril in your man's assignment, and 'twas my
thought, if Coode should kill or kidnap him with the paper on his person,
he might think you yourself were an impostor— 'twould have spun his com-
pass for fair! Howbeit, he could not rest at fetching your trunk, it seems,
but must parade St. Mary's City as the Laureate and declare his post in
every inn and tavern."

"Ah God, the vain and faithless wretch!"

Thus it was, Burlingame declared, that on reaching the port of St. Mary's
some time ago, Anna had been given to think her brother was in the town
and had disembarked in quest of him. "I myself heard naught of this until
old Andrew came to Captain Mitchell's; he had leamt in London of my
whereabouts, and, like you, thinks Anna hath come to be my wife. But he
believes thou'rt party to the scheme as well and are pimping us in some
wise: when he learns the state of things at Maiden, today or tomorrow,
he'll assume you've fled with the twain of us to Pennsylvania, where fly
all fugitives from responsibility— the more readily, inasmuch as neither
Anna nor the false Laureate hath been seen or heard of since she landed."
He sucked in the corner of his mouth. " 'Twas my intent to stay with

[ 528 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Andrew, disguised as Timothy Mitchell, the better to temper his wrath
and learn his connection with Lord Baltimore; but so vain hath been my
search for parentage in the world, and so much rancor hath that search
engendered, from the Jesuit Thomas Smith and others, 'twas no longer safe
to play that role."

Ebenezer asked what were his tutor's present plans.

'We'll put ashore together at St. Mary's," Burlingame said. "You then
enquire in public places for news of Anna or Eben Cooke, and I shall search
alone for Coode."

"At once? Is't not more urgent to find my sister ere some harm befall
her?"

"Tis but two paths to a single end," replied Burlingame. "No man
knows more than Coode of what transpires in Maryland, and for aught we
know he may have made prisoners of them both,"

"'Sheart!"

"Besides which, if I can win his confidence, he may abet us in regaining
your estate. 'Twill be a joy to him, after all, to hear the Laureate of Mary-
land is his ally!" ^

"Nay, not so swiftly," Ebenezer protested. "I may be disabused of my
faith in Baltimore, but I've sworn no oaths of loyalty to John Coode. In
any case, as you well know, I ne'er was Laureate— and even had I been, I'd
be no longer. Look at this." He drew the ledger from his coat and showed
Burlingame the finished Marylandiad, which in view of its antipanegyric
tone he had retitled The Sot-Weed Factor. "Call't a clumsy piece if you
will," he challenged. " 'Tis honest nonetheless, and may spare others my
misfortunes."

"What's full of heart may be bare of art" Burlingame asserted with in-
terest, "—and vice-versa." He held the ledger open against the rail and read
the work closely several times while the Pilgrim ran down the Bay to Point
Lookout, where the Potomac River meets Chesapeake Bay. Although he
made no comments either favorable or unfavorable, when the time came
for them to transfer to the lighter for St. Mary's City he insisted that the
poem be forwarded aboard the Pilgrim to Ben Bragg, at the Sign of the
Raven in Paternoster Row.

"But he'll destroy it!" exclaimed the poet. "D'you recall how I came by
this ledger back in March?"

"He'll not destroy it," Burlingame assured him. "Bragg is obliged to me
in ways I shan't describe."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 529 ]

There was no time to ponder the proposal; with some misgivings Ebene-
zer allowed his former tutor to entrust The Sot-Weed Factor to the bark's
captain, who also refunded the balance of his fare to England, and the
two men were ferried upriver to St. Mary's City.

3: A COLLOQUY BETWEEN EX-LAUREATES OF
MARYLAND, RELATING DULY THE TRIALS OF MISS
LUCY ROBOTHAM AND CONCLUDING WITH AN
ASSERTION NOT LIGHTLY MATCHED FOR ITS
IMPLAUSIBILITY

NOT LONG AFTER HIS ARRIVAL IN THE PROVINCE SOME MONTHS PREVE-

ously, Governor Francis Nicholson had declared his intention to move
the seat of Maryland's government from St. Mary's City, which was un-
happily associated with Lord Baltimore, the Jacobean and Carolingian
kings, and the Roman Catholic Church, to Anne Arundel Town on the
Severn River, which enjoyed the double merit of a central location on the
Chesapeake and an altogether Protestant history. Although the actual
transfer of government records and the official change of the capital's name
from Anne Arundel Town to Annapolis were not to be effected until the
end of February, the consequences of the decision were noticeable already
in St. Mary's City: few people were on the streets; the capitol and other
public buildings were virtually deserted; and some inns and private houses
were abandoned or closed and boarded up.

Before the arched doorway of the Statehouse Burlingame said, " 'Twill
hasten our search if we move in separate directions; you enquire at the
wharves and taverns hereabouts, and I shall do likewise farther in the town.
At dusk we'll meet here and go to supper—God grant your sister will be
dining with us too!"

Ebenezer agreed to the proposal and to the wish as well, for though the
prospect of confronting Anna, after Burlingame's revelations, was a discon-
certing one, yet he feared for her safety alone in the Province.

"But if perchance we find her," he asked with a little smile, "what then?"

"Why, haply Coode will find some way to snatch Cooke's Point from
William Smith, and then, when Andrew hath returned in peace to Eng-
land, the three of us will make our home in Maiden. Or haply we'll fly to

[ 53° 1 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Pennsylvania, as your father suspects already: Anna, if she'll have me, shall
become Mrs. Nicholas Lowe, and you, under a nom de plume, poet
laureate to William Penn! Tis a wondrous tonic for defeat, to murther an
old self and beget a newl But we must hatch our chickens ere we count
'em."

The two then separated, Burlingame heading inland and Ebenezer to-
wards an inn not far from where they stood. Upon entering he found a
dozen or more townspeople eating and drinking and could not at once
muster courage enough to make his inquiries. He had not the small,
prerequisite effrontery of the journalist or canvasser, for one thing; for an-
other, he was still too confounded by events of the immediate past to know
clearly how he should feel about his present position. When was it he had
finished The Sot-Weed Factor in his room at Maiden? Only the previous
evening, though it seemed a fortnight past; yet since that time he had been
given to assimilate no fewer than twelve perfectly astounding facts, each
warranting the most careful contemplations and modification of his posi-
tion, and some requiring immediate and drastic action:
He had become the indentured servant of Maiden's master.
His father was in Maryland and en route to Cooke's Point.
His wife Susan Warren was in fact his Joan Toast of London.
But she was a slave to opium, a victim of the pox, and a whore to the

Indians of Dorchester.
Moreover she had been raped by the Moor Boabdil, and almost by Ebene-

zer himself.

He had in deserting her committed the most thoroughly and least equivo-
cally dishonorable act of his entire life— indeed, the very first of
any magnitude, not counting his thwarted ill intentions aboard the
Cyprian and at Captain Mitchell's manor.

Lord Baltimore might not at all represent, as he had supposed, the very

essence of Good, and Coode the essence of Evil, but vice versa, if

Burlingame spoke truly; and Andrew might well be party to an

enormously vicious plot.

His tutor Burlingame had been, perhaps, a loyal friend after all, and

was inflamed with passion for Ebenezer and Anna as one.
* His sister was at that moment somewhere in the Province/
She was a virgin to that day, despite her intimacy with Burlingame.
She loved not Burlingame but her brother, in a way too dark and deep
for her cognition.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 531 ]

And he himself had no direction, aim, or prospect whatsoever for the
future, but was as orphan in the world as was Burlingame, without
that gentleman's corporal, financial, intellectual, experiential, or spir-
itual resources.

With these propositions very nearly unhinging his Reason, how could he
approach the strangers and calmly put his question? Even their mildly curi-
ous stare upon his entrance set his stomach a-quiver and his face afire. His
small resolution vanished; with some of the money entrusted to him by
Joan Toast he purchased his first meal since the previous day and, when it
was eaten, he left the inn. For some minutes he wandered unsystematically
through the several rude streets of the town, as though in hopes of glimps-
ing Anna herself on one of them. Had the season permitted, he would
doubtless have continued thus all day, for want of courage refusing to
comprehend in what serious straits his sister might well languish, and then
at sundown have reported with a sigh to Burlingame that his inquiries had
borne no fruit. But the wet wind off St. Mary's River soon chilled him
through; he was obliged to take refuge in another nameless public house,
the only other tavern he had observed, and order rum to still the chatter-
ing of his teeth.

This establishment was, he observed, less elegantly appointed than its
competitor: the floor was paved with oystershells, the tables were bare of
cloths, and in the air hung a compound fragrance of stale smoke, stale
beer, and stale seafood. This last smell seemed to come not so much from
the tavern's cuisine as from the damp coats of its patrons, who in other
respects as well appeared to be fishermen. Not so curious as the clientele of
the inn where he had dined, they paid Ebenezer no notice whatever, but
went on with their talk of seines and the weather, or fingered beards and
brooded into their glasses. Although their indifference removed any pos-
sibility of Ebenezer's interrogating them, at the same time it permitted him
to feel less uneasy in their presence; he was able to move his chair nearer
the fireplace and was even emboldened, as he sipped his rum, to survey
the other customers more closely.

In one comer of the room, once his eyes grew accustomed to the meager
light, he noticed a man sleeping with head, arms, and chest upon the table.
Whether liquor, despair, or mere fatigue was the soporific, the poet could
not tell, but his heart beat faster at the sight, for though the fellow was no
cleaner nor less ragged than his companions, his coat in better days had
been not the honest Scotch cloth of the laborer, but plum-colored serge

[532] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and silver-grey prunella— a very twin to the one Ebenezer had worn to his
audience with Lord Baltimore and had packed next day in his trunk to
bring to Maryland! That there could be two such coats was most unlikely,
for Ebenezer had chosen the goods himself and had them tailored to the
style of the moment, which was scarcely to be seen outside London;
nevertheless he dared not risk a scene by waking the fellow, and so signaled
for more rum instead and asked the waiter who the slumbering chap
might be.

"Haply 'tis Governor Nicholson, or King William," the man replied.
" Tis not my wont to pry into my patrons' lives."

'To be sure, to be sure," Ebenezer persisted, and pressed two shillings
into his hand. "But 'tis of some small importance that I know."

The waiter examined the coins and seemed to find them satisfactory.
"The fact is," he declared, "nobody knows just who the wight may be, as I
said before, albeit he hires his bed upstairs and eats his meals at yonder
table."

"What's this! Ye want two shillings for that news?"

The waiter held up an admonitory finger and explained that the sleeping
man was no stranger to St. Mary's— indeed, he had frequented the tavern
for some months past—but current rumor had it that his declared identity
was false.

"He hath given all and sundry to believe he is the Laureate Poet of
Maryland, name of Ebenezer Cooke, but either he's the grandest swindler
that ever prowled St. Mary's, or else he is afraid of his very shadow."

Ebenezer betrayed such considerable interest in this statement that to
hear it glossed set him back another shilling.

"He came to St. Mary's last September or October," the waiter went
on, pocketing the money, "though whence or how no man knows truly,
since the fleet was come and gone some weeks before. He was dressed in
the clothes ye see there, that were splendid then as a St. Paul fop's, and
had a wondrous swaggering air, and declared he was the Laureate of Mary-
land, Eben Cooke."

'TChrist, the fraud!" Ebenezer exclaimed. "Did no man doubt him?"

"He had his share of hecklers; that he did," the waiter conceded.
"Whene'er they asked him for a verse he'd say The muse sings not in
taverns/ or some such; and when they asked him how he was so lately
come from England, he declared he'd been kidnaped by the pirates from
Jim Meech's boat Poseidon ere the fleet reached the Capes, and was later
cast o'erside to drown, but swam ashore and found himself in Maryland.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 533 ]

The wags and wits had fun at his expense, but his story was borne out
anon by Colonel Robotham himself, the Councillor "

"Nay!"

The waiter nodded firmly. "The Colonel and his daughter had crossed
with him on the Poseidon and had seen him kidnaped, along with his
servant and three sailors, that have ne'er been heard from since. Some
skeptical souls still doubt the fellow's story, for he hath spoke not a line
of verse these many months, and to set him in a panic one need only
mention his father Andrew's name, or the name of his father-in-law."

"Father-in-law!" Ebenezer rose from his chair. "You mean William
Smith, the cooper?"

"I know no cooper named Smith," the waiter laughed. "I mean Colonel
Robotham of Talbot, that was persuaded enough to take him for a son-
in-law, but hath learned since of another wight that's said to be Eben
Cooke! He means to file suit against the impostor, but in the meantime
this fellow here so fears him "

"No more," Ebenezer said grimly. "I've heard enough." Leaving his fresh
glass of rum untouched he strode unhesitatingly to the sleeper's table, and
as soon as he saw that it was in fact his valet Bertrand Burton who slum-
bered there, he shook him by the shoulders with both hands.

"Wake up, wretch! Wake up!"

If rum was his anesthetic, Bertrand had slept away its influence; he sat
up at once, and his alarm at being awakened thus ungently turned to
horror when he saw who had been shaking him.

"Base conniver!" Ebenezer whispered fiercely. "What have you done
now?"

"Stay, Master Eben, stay!" the valet whispered back, glancing miserably
about to judge the peril of his position. But the other patrons, if they
had observed the scene at all, were watching with the idlest curiosity and
amusement: they showed no signs of understanding the confrontation.
"Let's leave this place ere ye speak another word! I've much to tell ye!"

"And I thee," the poet replied unpleasantly. "So thou'rt afraid some-
what for your welfare, Master Laureate?"

"With reason," Bertrand admitted, still glancing about. "But more for
your own, sir, and for your sister Anna's!"

Ebenezer gripped the man's wrists. "Curse your heait, man! What do
you know of Anna?"

"Not here!" the valet pleaded. "Come to my room upstairs, where we
may speak without fear."

I 534 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"'Tis yours to fear, not mine," Ebenezer said, but permitted Bertrand
to get up without further comment and lead the way upstairs. The valet
was clothed from wig to slippers, he observed, with articles from his trunk,
all now much the worse for wear and want of cleaning; but the man him-
self, though blear-eyed with sleep and trepidation, had clearly much im-
proved his lot by playing laureate. When last Ebenezer had seen him they
were both in the condition of castaways: shoeless, wigless, and thin, with
shredded garments and matted beards; now he was well fleshed out, and
dignified even in his dishevelment— unquestionably a more prepossessing
figure than his master. By the time they entered Bertrand's room, the only
furnishings of which were a bed, a chair, and a pitcher-stand, Ebenezer
could scarcely contain his indignation.

But the valet spoke first. "How is't thou'rt here, sir? I thought ye were
a prisoner at Maiden."

"You knewl" Ebenezer paled. 'Tou knew my wretched state and
exploited it!" His anger so weakened him that he was obliged to take
the chair.

"Pray hear my side oft," Bertrand begged. "Tis true I played your part
at first from vanity, but anon I was obliged to— will-I» nill-I— and since
I heard of your imprisonment, my only aim hath been to do ye a service."

"I know thy services!" the poet snarled. " Twas in my service you gam-
bled away my savings aboard the Poseidon and got me a name for seducing
the ladies into the bargain!"

But Bertrand, little daunted, insisted on explaining his position more
fully, and Ebenezer, though he frowned his disapproval from start to finish
and was not sparing of sarcastic commentary, made no attempt to cut him
off.

"No man wishes more than I," the valet declared, "that I had stayed
behind in London with my Betsy and let my poor cod take its chances
with Ralph Birdsall— Better a shive lost than the whole loaf, as they say.
But Fate would have it otherwise, and "

"Put by thy whining preamble," his master ordered, "and get on with
thy lying tale."

"What I mean to say, sir, there I was, half round the globe from my
heart's desire, abused and left to drown by the cursed pirates, and farther
disappointed at the loss of my ocean isle "

"The loss of your ocean isle!"

"Aye, sir— what I mean, 'tis not every day a man sees seven golden cities
slip through his fingers, as't were, to say nothing of all my fair-skinned

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 535 ]

heathen wenches, that would do whatever dev'lish naughty trick might
cross my fancy, and fetch me cakes and small-beer by the hour "

"Go to,, go to, thou'rt slavering!" said the poet.

"And there was my noble Drakepecker, bless his heart— big and bkck
as a Scotland bull, and man enough to crack the Whore o' Babylon, but
withal as meek a parishioner as any god could boast— that ye lightly gave
away to nurse an ill-odored salvage "

44 'Sheart, man, pass o'er the history and commence thy fabrication! I
was there!"

With this assertion Bertrand declared he had no quarrel. "The sole aim
of my relating it," he said, "is to help ye grasp the pity of my straits what
time the sluttish swine-girl told us this was Maryland, and I was obliged
to fall from Heav'n to Hell, as't were."

"Be't thy pitiful straits or thy craven neck," the poet responded, "I'll

do my grasping without thy help. As for the swine-girl " He hesitated,

thought better of announcing his marriage,, and demanded instead that
the servant begin with his arrival in St. Mary's City nearly three months
previously and account for his subsequent behavior in a fashion as brief
and clear as such a concatenation of chicaneries might permit.

"My one wish is to do that very thing, sir," Bertrand protested. " *Tis
that first pose alone I beg forgiveness for, and thought to whiten by this
preamble— the rest is deserving more of favor than reproof, and I shall lay
it open to ye as readily as I did to your poor sister, and would to Master
Andrew himself, that first sent me to ye in Pudding Lane for no other
purpose in the wide, wicked world "

"Than what?" Ebenezer cried. "Than stealing my name and office to
do a Councillor out of his daughter? May the murrain carry me off if I
do not flay an honest English sentence from your hide!"

"-—than advising and protecting ye," Bertrand said, and when his master
made as if to spring upon him he retreated to the other side of the bed
and hastened to tell his story. The revelation that they were in Maryland
instead of Cibola, he explained, and consequently that he was no longer
a deity but only a common servant, had so filled him with dejection that
when on orders from Timothy Mitchell he had gone with another servant
to fetch Ebenezer's trunk, he could not resist the temptation to pose as
poet laureate, only for the term of the errand, in ministry to his sorely
wounded pride. He had therefore declared to his companion that he him-
self was in reality Ebenezer Cooke and the man at Captain Mitchell's

[ 536 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

his servant, and that they had exchanged roles temporarily as a precaution-
ary measure. However, he had continued, their reception in the Province
had been cordial enough, and the disguise was no longer necessary. They
had then fetched the trunk in the name of Ebenezer Cooke, and after
securing the night's lodgings for master and man, Bertrand had struck out
on his own to make the most of his short-term office.

"All went well/' he sighed, "until the hour I left Vansweringen's place,
up the street. The sun was still high, and I was somewhat dagged with
rum; whilst I stood a moment to take my bearings and ease my eyes, a
fine young lady comes a-weeping up as pretty as ye please, throws her arms
about my neck, and cries out 'Darling Ebenezer!' and the like. 'Twas Lucy
Robotham, that same tart that plagued me so on the Poseidon and that
had thought me long since murthered by the pirates!"

For old times' sake, Bertrand went on, he had bought dinner at Vanswer-
ingen's for Miss Robotham, whose father was in St. Mary's to sit with
the Council, and when she removed her coat to eat he had observed, to
his surprise, that she was pregnant. Upon his interrogating her (Ebenezer
winced at the thought) she burst into fresh tears and confessed that on
reaching Maryland she had been deceived into marrying the Reverend
Mr. George Tubman, the same whose speculative talents had impoverished
half the Poseidon's passengers, and had been by him impregnated in the
rectory of Port Tobacco parish, only to learn not long after that their
marriage was illegal, the Reverend Mr. Tubman having neglected to
divorce his first wife in London. Colonel Robotham had arranged at once
for annulment of the marriage and had further applied to the Bishop for
proceedings of suspension against both Tubman and the Reverend Mr.
Peregrine Cony, who he averred had knowingly licensed his colleague's
bigamous union, but the Colonel's influence in the Province had as yet
been unable to provide another husband for Lucy or retard the growing
signs of her condition, which along with the reputation she had got for
promiscuity had all but removed her from the gentleman's list of eligible
maidens.

"I saw then the reason for her joy at finding me alive," the valet said,
"and I made a great show of sympathy, albeit I'd not have married her
as Bertrand Burton, much less as Eben Cooke! A house already made, as
the saying goes, but a wife to make. Yet I kept my feelings hid, nor showed
by word or deed that I had grasped her scurvy trick. On the contrary,
I played the gallant Laureate with right good will, the better to learn
what else the wench had up her sleeve."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 537 ]

"And so resume where you had left off on the Poseidon, I doubt not."

Bertrand raised his finger. "I'll not deny we had some sport ere the day
was done," he said righteously. "I had been the De'il's own time 'twixt
drinks, as't were, and longed to see again that famous emblem Lucy boasts.
Tis all in freckles, b'm'faith, and "

"I know, I know," Ebenezer said impatiently. " Tis the likeness of Ursa
Major, and the rest."

Bertrand clucked his tongue before the memory. "Besides, there is an
uncommon pleasure in lasses lately got with child "

"Nay, i'God, you sicken me! Thou'rt a Frenchman, or a jaded Moor,
to crave such refinements!"

"In any case," the valet finished with a shrug, "I reasoned 'twas no more
than the doxy's due, that had done ye out o' your money with her crooked
odds and wagers."

"I say!" cried Ebenezer. "Speaking of wagers "

"Say no more," Bertrand interrupted with a smile. "The selfsame query
was on my mind from the instant I beheld her, and directly the time be-
fitted, I asked her straight who had won that last monster of a ship's pool,
wherein I'd wagered the whole o' Cooke's Point at Jewman's odds to regain
the money I had lost before. At first she'd not reply, but when I offer'd
her my belt athwart her hams—as I was wont to swat sweet Betsy what
times she'd tease— why, then I wrung the truth from her, which was, that
she herself, by collusion with Tubman and that whoreson Captain Meech,
had won the prizel"

"FChrist!"

The winnings, Bertrand went on, had then been divided between the
three partners, and Tubman had increased his share by the impregnation
and marriage (respectively, it now turned out) of Miss Robotham. As soon
as the conveyances of property were duly effected he had disclosed the
bigamous nature of the match, hoping thereby to rid himself of the girl;
but he had reckoned without the ire of his new father-in-law, Colonel
Robotham, who had promptly exposed the business and taken the legal
action mentioned earlier.

"But what of the property?" Ebenezer demanded. "Doth Tubman hold
title to it yet?"

The valet smiled. "To the most he did, at the time I speak of, and
to the most he doth yetr for aught I know to the contrary. But aside from
my own wager, all his winnings were in cash or chattels, such as horses,

[538] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

pirogues, and hogsheads o' sot-weed. Cooke's Point was the only proper
estate he won "

"God curse you for wagering it!" swore the poet.

Bertrand raised his eyebrows. "Haply 'twas not such a folly after all, sir.
The wretch had ne'er before won such a prize, and more especially as he
thought us murthered by the pirates, he was afraid to press his claim, for
fear the courts would leam the evil of his ways."

"'Twould but improve his chances if they did," Ebenezer said, but
there was relief in his surly tone. "An honest wight fares ill in a Maryland
court. Go on,"

In consequence, Bertrand declared, the Reverend Mr. Tubman had con-
tented himself with what winnings he could collect as gentleman's debts
from the bettors themselves, out of court, and in an effort to appease Colo-
nel Robotham's wrath on the occasion of the annulment, had reconveyed
to Lucy his note of title to Cooke's Point, not many days prior to her en-
counter with the note's original author.

"She was as doubtful as old Tubman how the courts might rule on't,"
said the valet. " Twas her hope I'd make over the deed to her as a gentle-
man ought, particularly in the light of her condition, but when I gave
no signs of such intent, she could no more than weep and threaten."

His next move, he explained, had been to send the other servant back
to Captain Mitchell as Timothy had directed and make plans to ferry him-
self and his freight to Maiden. However, reckoning that his master would
allow for unforseen delays and complications in securing and transporting
the trunk, he had lingered another day in St. Mary's as the guest of Colonel
Robotham, and another and another after that, loath to relinquish the
charms of office and Lucy's desperate favors. During this period his host
and mistress had alternately cajoled and threatened him: their primary goal
was to unite by marriage the houses of Cooke and Robotham, and solve
hereby all their problems with one stroke; alternatively they vowed to
carry the matter into court, despite the uncertain legality of their claim,
in hopes that with Cooke's Point for dowry even a pregnant tart could
find a willing spouse of decent lineage. But since neither party could bargain
from a position of clear strength, the argument was confined to subtle hints
and equivocal negations, and Bertrand, having dispatched the trunk some
days before, had enjoyed a week of such leisurely diversions and delights
as most valets taste only in their dreams.

At week's end, however, he had heard from an unimpeachable barman
in Vansweringen's that a man called Eben Cooke, on the Eastern Shore,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 539 ]

had signed over his whole estate to a common cooper— whether in some
saintly spirit of justice, in satisfaction of some dark and sinister obligation
or merely in error was much debated— and that, the conveyance being ap-
parently legal, Cooke himself had fallen mortally ill and was being cared
for on his lost estate, in return for marrying the cooper's whore of a daughter.

'This news near felled me where I stood," the valet said. "No man
doubted I was really Eben Cooke— for ye must grant, sir, whatever thy prin-
ciples, I've a knack for playing poet— but they expected me to fly to Dorset
at once and turn both the cooper and the rascally impostor out. What's
more, 'twas terrible to hear what had befallen ye, and more terrible yet
to think of ye lying at death's door, as't were, and obliged to marry some
unwashed coney of a serving maid "

Ebenezer held up his hand. "Forego thy wondrous pity," he said dan-
gerously. "I'm sure it soured your dinner at the Colonel's and made you
a zestless lover for Miss Lucy."

"The heart hath no defense against your understanding!" Bertrand mar-
veled. "It did no less than what ye say— though of course I durst not give
the slightest outward sign oft"

"Of course not."

Instead, declared Bertrand, he had confessed to Colonel Robotham that
the same pernicious traitors to the King who had arranged to have him
kidnaped and murdered by pirates were attempting to work his ruin in
the Province, lest by the power of his pen he expose their seditious plots
to the light of day. It was in anticipation of their schemes that he had
sent his man before him to reconnoiter in the guise of Laureate— that same
presumptuous amanuensis who had served him thus, unasked, on earlier
occasions— little dreaming that the strategem would so misfire. The Colonel
then, eager to obligate his guest in any way he could, offered to intercede
at once with Governor Nicholson, who had a perfect hatred even of debate,
to say nothing of insurrection; but Bertrand proposed a quite different plan
of attack, so agreeable to the Robothams that as one they laid down their
euchre-hands and tearfully embraced him.

"I wait in mortal fear to hear it," said the poet.

"'Twas as simple as it was effective," the valet sighed, "—or so it
seemed at the time I hatched it. I proposed to keep the matter entre
nous "

"Entre nous? Marry, thou'rt learning to scheme in French!"

Bertrand blushed. " Tis a word Lucy uses whene'er she means to have
profit at some other wight's expense. My plan, I say,, was to keep the matter

[ 540 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

entre nous untill knew more of your plight and how I best might aid ye;
I saw no merit in discovering my true name and rank to the Robothams,
nor in risking my disguise by taking my troubles to the Governor, I de-
clared Fd given ye the power of attorney, the better to carry out your pose
as Laureate, and that this power lent the cooper's title to Cooke's Point
a certain slender substance, if 'twere contested in a biased court; for albeit
the grant was made by a false Laureate (so I told the Colonel), yet the
impostor was my legal agent and proxy, empowered to do any business in
my name."

"I swear, thou'rt as grand a casuist as Richard Sowter!" Ebenezer said,
and Bertrand, to whom the term was no more familiar than the man,
beamed and took the remark as complimentary.

"'Tis but the giblet-sauce and dressing to what followed, sir: on the
heels oft I proposed to many Mistress Lucy on the instant and offered
as my reason that, though her claim as such had no more law in't than
a bumswipe, yet 'twas prior to any .the traitors might shark up; if I was
to support it as author of the note, husband of the claimant, and bona
fide Laureate o' Maryland, 'twould carry the day in the Devil's own as-
sizes!"

"Marry come up!" the poet exclaimed. 'Tou meant to steal my estate
to go with my name and office!"

"'Twas stolen already," Bertrand reminded him. "I meant to steal it
back to its rightful owner, if I could, whereupon I'd declare my actual
name, and Lucy Robotham could go hang for all she'd be my legal wife!"
The Colonel, he added, had been pleased with this proposal, and Lucy
more than pleased; the marriage had been solemnized at once and con-
summated beyond cavil, and although he had not been able, as he had
hoped, to enter on Lucy's note a clause of relinquishment in favor of
her husband, nonetheless he considered Cooke's Point saved.

"I am staggered by this duplicity!" Ebenezer said. "Where is this miser-
* able creature you've deceived, and her poor father? How is't thou'rt cower-
ing in this tavern instead of lording it at Maiden?"

"Colonel Robotham hath been on business up the country these two
months," Bertrand sighed, "and his daughter hath been with him at my
behest. I declared she was in danger from the traitors and must stay with
her father at least till her confinement; but the truth oft was, I had been
living at the Colonel's whole expense and would be revealed an arrant
pauper the day he left. 'Twas my good fortune Lucy had a few pounds
saved, that she entrusted to my keeping: 'twas just enough to buy my

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 54* ]

food and drink, and pay the hire for this verminous chamber." In vain,
he said, had he endeavored to leam more news of Ebenezer's plight
and to set in motion the legal strategy he had devised: his hands were tied
for lack of money and influence until the Colonel's return.

"And in any case, the game is o'er/' he concluded gloomily. "Colonel
Robotham will return next week to Talbot, and if he doth not learn the
truth from your father, he must guess it when he sees the state Fm in.
Or else Master Andrew himself will search me out here when he learns
thou'rt not at Maiden— I had ne'er escaped him this last time had your
sister not forewarned me he was coming "

"Where did you find Anna, and where is she now?"

" 'Twas she found me," said Bertrand, "the very day she stepped ashore
in Maryland. She came to find you in this room, where all St. Mary's
knows the Laureate hath been quartered, and at first I scarcely knew her,
she hath aged so."

Ebenezer winced.

"She was as taken aback at sight of me as was I at sight of her, that
each thought the other was in England. I told her what I knew about
your straits, without mentioning my own, and for all I begged her not to
rush in recklessly, there was naught for't but she cross the Bay that after-
noon, traitors or no, and either nurse ye back to health or be murthered
at your graveside."

"Dear, darling Anna!" Ebenezer cried, and blushed when he recalled
Burlingame's discourse of the morning. "What happened then?"

"She found passage in a sloop for the Little Choptank River," said Ber-
trand. "I spoke to her captain later below stairs, and he told me she'd gone
ashore at a place called Tobacco Stick, his closest anchorage to Cooke's
Point. Neither I nor any soul else, to my knowledge, hath farther news
of her than that."

"Merciful God! No farther news? What hath possessed the precious girl,
to travel alone in this vicious country! Who knows what trials she might
have suffered these many days, or what reception she hath met with al-
ready from the cooper?" A thought occurred to him, so monstrous that
the gorge rose in his throat: William Smith was most certainly angry over
his flight from Maiden in violation of his indenture-bond, and Joan Toast
more wrathful still at having been abandoned^ suppose poor Anna had
fallen into their clutches, and they had taken revenge on her for her
brother's deeds!

"Heav'n save her!" he gasped to Bertrand, rising weakly from the chair.

[ 542 I T™ SOT-WEED FACTOR

"They might have forced her into whoredom! This very minute, for aught
we know, some greasy planter or great swart salvage - "

"Hi, sir! What is't ye say?" Bertrand ran alarmed to pound his master
on the back, who had fallen into a fit of retching.

"Hire us a boat," Ebenezer ordered, as soon as he caught his breath.
'We'll set out for Maiden this instant, and hang the consequences!" With-
out mentioning his desertion of Joan Toast, he explained as briefly as he
could to the astonished servant the fallen state of Maiden, the circumstances
of his departure, his rescue by Henry Burlingame, the enormous conspiracy
afoot in the Province, and the particular danger awaiting Anna whether or
not Andrew arrived before her at Cooke's Point, since his position was un-
certain. 'Til tell you more the while we're crossing," he promised. "We
daren't lose a minute!"

"I know a captain we might hire," Bertrand ventured, "and I'd as well
be murthered by your cooper as by Colonel Robotham when he finds me,
but in truth I've no more than a shilling left of Lucy's money . . ."

"Callow wretch!" His anger at the man fired anew by this reminder,
Ebenezer was ready to chide him further for his abuse of Lucy Robotham,
but brought himself up short with a shiver of mortification. "I've money
enough," he grumbled, moving towards the stair, and offered no explana-
tion of its source.

At the waterside they found the captain Bertrand had in mind, and
despite the lateness of the afternoon and the unpromising weather, that
gentleman agreed, for the outrageous price of three pounds sterling, to
carry them to Cooke's Point in his little fishing boat. As they were about
to step aboard Ebenezer remembered his scheduled rendezvous at the
Statehouse.

"I'faith, I well-nigh forgot— I must leave word for Henry Burlingame,
that hath gone to ask John Coode for aid." He smiled at Bertrand's sur-
prise. " 'Tis too long a tale to tell now, but I will say this: that Tim Mitchell
who sent you hither was not Captain Mitchell's son at all— 'twas Henry
Burlingame."

"Ye cannot mean it!" The valet's face was horror-struck.

"No Christian soul else," the poet affirmed.

"Then ye have more need of prayers than messages," said Bertrand. "God
help us all!"

"What rot is this?"

"Your friend need look no farther than his glass to find John Coode,"
the valet declared. "He is John Coode!"

4: THE POET CROSSES CHESAPEAKE BAY, BUT NOT
TO HIS INTENDED PORT OF CALL

"'TIS GOSPEL TRUTH, I SWEAR?T!" BERTRAND INSISTED. "THERE IS NO

better place for news than a St. Mary's tavern, and I've had eyes and ears
wide open these several months. 'Twas common knowledge amongst his
hirelings that Tim Mitchell was John Coode in disguise, and now yeVe told
me your Master Burlingame was Tim Mitchell— b'm'faith, I should have
guessed ere now! 'Tis in the very stamp and pattern of the man!"

Ebenezer shook his head. "Tis an assertion not lightly to be matched
for implausibility." Nevertheless, he showed no indignation, as he had on
other occasions when the valet had aspersed his former tutor.

"Nay, sir, believe me; 'tis as clear as a schoolboy's sums! Only think:
Where did ye first hear of this fiend John Coode?"

"From Lord Baltimore, ere I left," Ebenezer replied. "That is— ah, nay,
I'll own, 'twas from Burlingame in the guise of Baltimore. But — "

"And when did Coode commence his factions and rebellions in the
Province? Was't not the very year Burlingame came hither? And is't not
true that whene'er Master Burlingame is in England, he tells ye Coode
is there too?"

"But Heav'n forfend — "

"D'ye think Master Burlingame could pass for two minutes as Coode
with Slye and Scurry, much less make a three-month crossing in their
company? 'Tis past belief!"

"Yet he hath a wondrous talent for disguise," the poet protested.

"Aye and he doth, b'm'faith! From all I've heard from yourself and
others, he hath posed as Baltimore, Coode, Colonel Sayer, Tim Mitchell,
Bertrand Burton, and Eben Cooke, to mention no more, and hath ne'er
been found out yet! But what's the chiefest talent of John Coode, if not
the same? Hath he not played priest, minister, general, and what have ye?
Is't not his wont to travel always incognito, so that his own lieutenants
scarce know his natural face?"

"But he was six years my tutor! I know the man!" Even as he made it,
Ebenezer realized the vast untruth of this declaration. The fact of the
matter was, once he thought of it in that light, he could supply far more

[ 544 3 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

evidence than could Bertrand to establish the hypothesis, at first so ap-
parently ridiculous, that Burlingame and John Coode were one and the
same man. Although he continued to shake his head as in disbelief, at
their ferryman's suggestion he abandoned the idea of returning to the inn
to leave a message, and the fishing sloop made way down the St. Mary's
River towards the Potomac, whence it would stand northwards up the Bay
to Dorchester County.

" Tis all shifting and confounded!" he complained shortly afterwards,
when he and Bertrand had retreated from the weather to a tiny shelter-
cabin behind the mast. He was thinking not only of Burlingame and
the surprising transvaluation of Lord Baltimore and Coode which his former
tutor had argued so persuasively that morning (and which, after Bertrand' s
announcement, seemed most self-incriminating), but for that matter Ber-
trand, John McEvoy, and virtually everyone else. "No man is what or
whom I take him for!"

"There's much goes on," the valet nodded darkly, "that folk like thee
and me know naught of. Things are de'il the bit what they seem."

"Why, i'Christ " Ebenezer gave himself over to exasperated con-
jecture. "How do I know 'tis Burlingame I've traveled with in the first
place,, when he alters everything from face to philosophy every time I re-
encounter him? Haply Burlingame died six years ago, or is Baltimore's pris-
oner, or Coode's, and all these others are mere impostors!"

"Tis not impossible," Bertrand admitted.

"And this war to the death 'twixt Baltimore and Coode!" Ebenezer
laughed sharply. "How do we know who's right and who's wrong, or
whether 'tis a war at all? What's to keep me from declaring they're in
collusion, and all this show of insurrection's but a cloak to hide some dread-
ful partnership?"

" 'Twould not surprise me in the least, if ye want to know. I've never
trusted that Jacobite Baltimore, any more than I've trusted Mr. Burlingame,
from the first."

"Jacobite, you say? 'Sheart, what an innocent rustic thou'rt become!
Think you King William's not secretly as much in league with James as he is
with Louis and the Pope o' Rome? Is't not a well-known fact that More
history's made by secret handshakes than by all the parliaments in the
world?"

"There's much would surprise an honest man, if he just but knew't,"
the valet murmured, but he shifted uneasily and stared out at the lowering
sky.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 545 ]

"1'faith, thou'rt a greater sage than Socrates, fellow! These sayings of
yours should be writ in gold leaf on the entablatures of public buildings,
lest any wight forget! What is't but childish innocence keeps the mass o'
men persuaded that the church is not supported by the brothel, or that
God and Satan do not hold hands in the selfsame cookie-jar?"

"Ah, now, sir, ye go too far!" Bertrand's tone was hushed. "Some things
ye know as clear as ye know your name."

Ebenezer laughed again, in the manner of one possessed by fever. "Then
you really believe 'tis Eben Cooke thou'rt speaking to? How is't you never
guessed I was John Coode?"

"Nay, sir, go to!" the servant pleaded. "Thou'rt undone by thy misfor-
tunes and know not what ye speak! Prithee go to!"

But the poet only leered the more menacingly. "You may fool others
by playing some looby of a servingman, but not John Coode! I know thou'rt
Ebenezer Cooke, and you'll not escape murthering this time!"

"I'll tell the captain to fetch us back to St. Mary's City at once, sir,"
Bertrand whined, "and summon a good physician to bleed ye. 'Tis late in
the day for a crossing anyhow, and marry, look yonder at the whitecaps
on the Bay! Rest and sleep— rest and sleep'll make ye a new man by to-
morrow, take my word for't. Only look astern, sir: there's a proper hurricane
blowing up! I'll speak to the captain "

"Nay, man, come back; I'll tease no more/' He closed his eyes and rubbed

them with thumb and forefinger. " Twas just Ah well, I had a picture

in my mind, that I'd forgot till now, and I thought " He paused to

pinch himself unmercifully on the forearm, grunted at the pain of it, and
sighed.

"Please, sir, 'tis a frightful storm coming yonder! This wretched toy will
go down like stone!"

"And you think we're really here, then, and can drown? This thing I
spoke of, that had just jumped back to mind— 'twas back in Pudding Lane
last March— marry, it seems five years ago! I had been offered a sort of
wager with Ben Oliver, an obscene business, and had fled to my room fox
very mortification "

" 'Sheart, feel how she rolls and pitches, sir, now we're clear o' land!"

The poet ignored his man's terror, "When I was alone again in my room,

I had a perfect fit of shame; I longed to go back and play the man with

Joan Toast in the winehouse, but I'd not the courage for't, and in the

midst of my brooding I fell asleep there at my writing table."

The roll of the boat threw Bertrand to his knees; his face went white.

[ 546 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

" Tis all very well, sir, all very well indeed; but I must shout to the
captain to turn back! We can fetch Miss Anna another time, when the
weather's clear!"

Ebenezer declared they would fetch her now, and went on with his
reminiscence. "The thing I just recalled/' he said, "was how Joan Toast
waked me by knocking on my door, and how I was so amazed to see
her, and still so full of sleep, I could not tell to save my life whether 'twas
a dream or not. And I remember reasoning clearly 'twas doubtless a cruel
dream, for naught so wondrous e'er occurred in natural life. All my joys
and tribulations commenced with that knock on the door, and so fantastical
are they, I wonder if I am not still in Pudding Lane, still wrapped in
troubled sleep, and all this parlous history but a dream/'

'Would Heav'n it were, sir!" cried the valet. "Hear that wind, i'Christ,
and the sky already dark!"

"I have had dreams that seemed more real," Ebenezer said, "and so hath
Anna, many's the time. There was a trick we knew as children: when the
lions of Numidia were upon us or we'd fallen from some great Carpathian
cliff, we'd say, Tis but a dream, and noiv Til wake; 'tis but a dream, and
now Til wake— and sure enough, we'd wake in our beds in St. Giles in the
Fields! Why, we were even wont to wonder, when we talked at night
betwixt our two bedchambers, whether all of life and the world were not
just such a dream; many and many's the time we came nigh to trying our
magical chant upon't, and thought we'd wake to a world where no people
were, nor Earth and Sun, but only disembodied spirits in the void." He
sighed. "But we ne'er durst try "

"Try't now, sir/' Bertrand pleaded, "ere we're drowned past saying
charms! I'God, sir, try't now!"

The poet laughed, no longer feverishly. "'Twould do you no good in
any case, Bertrand. The reason we never tried it was that we knew only
one of us could be The Dreamer of the WorZd— that was our name for't
—and we feared that if it worked, and one of us awoke to a strange new
cosmos, he'd discover he had no twin save in his dream. . . . 'Twas too
much to risk. What would it profit you if I saved myself and left you here
to drown?"

But Bertrand was too frightened to follow his master's reasoning: he fell
to pinching himself ferociously and bawling " 'Tis but a dream, and now
Til -wake! 'Tis but a dream, and now I'll wakel"— to no avail.

If his concern for Ebenezer's sanity had been unwarranted, his fear for
the safety of the boat was more than justified. The sudden half-gale that

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 547 ]

had blown up from the southwest was piling up seas in the open water
of the Chesapeake as formidable as any the poet had ever seen before, except
during the storm off Corvo in the Azores, and instead of the Poseidon's
two hundred tons and two dozen crewmen, his life was riding this time
in a gaff-rigged sloop- not forty feet long, manned by one white man
and a pair of husky Negroes. Already the light was failing, though it could
be no later than five in the afternoon; the prospect of sailing through
some fifty miles of those seas in total darkness seemed truly suicidal, and
at length, despite the urgency of his desire to find Anna, he asked the
Captain— a grizzled old gentleman by the name of Cairn— whether they
had not better return to St. Mary's.

" Tis what I've been trying to do this past half hour," the Captain re-
plied sourly, and explained that even with his jib and topsail struck and
his mainsail triple-reefed, he had been unable to sail close-hauled back into
the Potomac, which lay to windward; so strong were the frequent gusts
that the minimum amount of sail required for tacking was enough to dis-
mast or capsize the sloop. The only alternative had been- to drop anchor,
and even this, according to the Captain, was but a temporary expedient:
had the bottom been good holding ground, the anchor pendant would
have parted at the first gust; as it was they were dragging to leeward at a
great rate and would soon be beyond the depth of the pendant entirely.

"Yonder there's Point Lookout," he said, indicating an obscure and re-
treating point of land in the very eye of the wind. " Tis the last land ye'll
see this day, if not forever/'

Ebenezer felt cold fear. " 'Sbody! D'you mean 'tis over and done with
us?"

Captain Cairn cocked his head to indicate the possibility. "We'll heave
to and rig a sea anchor; after that 'tis God's affair, not mine."

Thus delivered of his sentiments, he and the Negroes bent a little try-
sail onto the mainmast to keep the bow to windward and replaced the
useless iron grapple with a canvas sea anchor, which, so long as the tide
was ebbing towards the ocean, would retard the vessel's northeastern lee-
way. There was nothing else to be done: when the work was finished
the Captain lashed the tiller and took shelter with his passengers in the
cabin, which, unfortunately for the crew, had room enough for just three
people inside. Point Lookout very soon vanished, and as if its disappearance
had been a signal, darkness closed in immediately afterwards, and the wind
and rain seemed to increase their intensity. The sloop was flung high
by each furious black sea and fell with a jarring slap into the trough

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

behind; the sea anchor, though of value in preventing the boat from broach-
ing to, caused her to nose rather deeply and ship a quantity of water at
the bow, which the Negroes were obliged to bail out with a crude wooden
bilge pump.

"Poor devils!" Ebenezer sympathized. "Should we not spell them at the
pumps and give them some respite in the cabin?"

"No need," the Captain replied. "Three hours shall see the end oft, one
way or another, and 'twill keep 'em from freezing in the meantime." What
he meant, the poet learned on further interrogating him, was that if the
storm did not .blow itself out, change its direction, or sink them, the pres-
ent rate and course of their leeway would carry them across the Bay in
three hours or so and bring them stern-foremost to the Eastern Shore.

"Then marry come up, we've hope after all, have we not?" Even Ber-
trand, who had been chattering with cold and fright, displayed some cheer
at this announcement.

"YeVe hope o7 drowning near shore, at least," the Captain said. "The
surf will swamp -her in a trice and haply break her up as well."

The valet moaned afresh, and Ebenezer's cheeks and forehead tingled.
Yet though the prospect of drowning horrified him no less now than it
had when he walked the pirates' plank off Cedar Point, about a dozen
miles northwest of their present position, the prospect of death itself, he
noted with some awe, held no more terrors. On the contrary: while he
would not have chosen to die, especially when Anna's welfare was so un-
certain, the thought of no longer having to deal with the lost estate,, his
father's wrath, and the sundry revelations and characters of Henry Burlin-
game, for example, was infinitely sweet. Delicious Death! Not in broodiest
night hours of his growth, when in anguish or fascination he would cease to
breathe, hold still his brain, and hear the blood rumble in his ears while he
strove dizzily and in vain to suspend the beating of his heart — not even
then had cool Oblivion seemed more balmy.

Except to grunt at occasional extraordinary crashes of water or lurches
of the boat, no one was much inclined during the period that followed
to speak aloud to anyone else. The storm, though uneven in its violence,
showed no signs of abating, and could at any moment, by how many pos-
sible combinations of wind and wave no man could say, have swamped
or capsized them without warning in a sea too cold and rough for the
ablest swimmer to survive more than twenty minutes. Yet thanks to the
sea anchor, the indefatigable Negroes at the pump, and an apparent
general seaworthiness about the hull, not to mention blind Providence, the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ $49 J

vessel remained hove to and afloat through gust after gust, sea after sea—
and slipped steadily, if not apparently, to leeward all the while. After a
time— which to Ebenezer could as reasonably have been twenty as two
hours— the Captain left off stroking his beard and raised his head atten-
tively. Both Ebenezer and Bertrand gave a start, and the poet inquired
anxiously what was the matter.

"Hark!" The Captain raised a hand for silence. "D'ye hear that, now?"
Without waiting for reply he threw open the door, stepped out onto
the deck, and, at the risk of swamping, ordered the Negroes to suspend
for a moment both their pumping and the rhythmical chantey with which
they paced and lightened their labor. Ebenezer strained his ears, but though
the open door amplified the noises of the storm and admitted no smalt
quantity of rain and cold air into the bargain, he could detect no novel
sound, nor could he see anything at all in the utter darkness.

The Captain bade the crew resume their pumping, without musical ac-
companiment, and thrust his dripping head back into cabin.

"There's land not far to leeward," he announced. "Ye can hear the
surf astern." And upon repeating his cheerless prophecy of some hours be-
fore, that one way or another their ordeal would soon be over, he disap-
peared into the darkness forward.

Then, despite Bertrand's protests that he would rather drown where he
sat than outside in the cold and wet, Ebenezer insisted that they too leave
the cabin, the better to swim for their lives when the boat went down
or broke up in the surf. The rainfall, they found, had considerably dimin-
ished, so that the entire length of the boat was visible; but the wind howled
as fiercely as ever, blowing the tops from the huge black seas that crashed
and shuddered about the hull. And now their new peril was identified,
Ebenezer could hear it too— the more profound and rhythmical thunder-
ing of invisible breakers to leeward.

Up toward the Captain cut loose the sea anchor, whose efficacy had
been steadily diminishing with the run of the tide, and cast the grapple
in its place— not with any serious hope of its holding fast on the rockless
bottom of the marsh country, into which general area he reckoned them
to have drifted, but merely to hold his vessel's bow into the wind and
delay as long as possible her reaching the breakers. Then he joined his
passengers aft and, stroking his beard afresh, listened with them to the
ominous rumble astern.

"Why can't we simply let go the anchor and ride the waves ashore?" the

[ 550 1 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

poet inquired. "It seems to me I've read of such a practice, amongst some
fisherfolk or other."

The Captain shook his head. "If 'twere a double-ender I might try
it, though e'en so ye'd have the devil's own time coming about. But your
square stern yaws in a following sea, don't ye know, and wants the proper
lift as well: the first good sea would either broach ye to or poop ye." He
did not trouble himself to define the latter catastrophe, but advised all
hands to divest themselves of boots, coats, wigs, and waistcoats, against the
desperate swim ahead, and to take positions more or less amidships.

"Not I," the valet objected. "Tis ten yards the less to swim if I jump
here astern/'

The Captain shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Stay there, then,
and be damned t'ye: we can use your weight to keep her trim. But I'll
not answer for't if the whole ship breaks on your idle skull!"

Seeing the flaw in his reasoning, Bertrand grew so ready in the captain's
service that, not content to stop amidships, he moved on the extreme
bow of the sloop and might even have attempted the sprit had not one
of the Negroes added the complementary caution, perhaps as a tease, that
too much weight forward would put the vessel down at the head and
jeopardize her rising to the seas, already hampered by the drag of the
grapple and pendant.

"Stay, listen!" the Captain interrupted. "D'ye hear?"

Again they strained their ears. "Naught but the storm and yonder surf,
as before," Ebenezer said.

"Aye, but not astern now; 'tis off the larboard quarter!" Facing aft, he
pointed about forty-five degrees to the right, to which invisible location,
sure enough, the sound of breakers had moved, although they were ap-
parently much nearer than before.

"What doth it mean?" Ebenezer demanded, uncertain whether to feel
more or less anxiety than he felt already. "Hath the wind shifted?"

"Not a point," said the Captain. " 'Tis sou'-sou'west, and should have
brought us Hooper's Island square astern. Haply 'tis just some cove or

bend o' the shoreline " He broke off his musing to send one of the

Negroes aft, to listen for surf to starboard or astern. But only to eastwards
could they hear it, and then east-southeastwards, and then dead southeast-
wards, as it moved from the quarter to the larboard beam; and though at
first its apparent proximity had increased at a fearful rate until it seemed
that the breakers must spill them at any moment, now that the sound was
abreast of them it grew no louder, while astern the storm raged on as it

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 551 ]

had in the middle of the Bay. Clearly, whatever land that surf broke on
they were leaving to larboard.

" 'Twas the run o' the tide in the sea anchor/' Captain Cairn declared
thoughtfully. "It hath dragged us something eastwards of our sternway—
which is to say, something south of Hooper's Island. My guess is, 'tis Limbo
Straits we're in, and yonder surf is a marsh called Bloodsworth Island. If it

is in sooth I'Christ, now, let me think!" He tugged ferociously at his

beard, while Ebenezer and Bertrand watched with awe. "No surf astern
yet, or to starboard?" he demanded again of the Negroes, and was answered
in the negative. The breakers to larboard were still moving slowly forward;
now the sound reached them from due south— about four points off the
larboard bow— and had diminished somewhat in volume, as had the seas
in height.

"Is't our ruin or our salvation?" asked the poet, at the same time
endeavoring to remember where it was that he had previously encountered
the name Limbo Straits.

"It could be either," said the Captain. "If that be Bloodsworth Island
yonder, why, there is a cove in the top oft called Okahanikan, just abeam,
where we might run for shelter; or we can drift through Limbo Straits and
take our chances with the surf on the Dorset mainland. Ye can see the
waves are something smaller now we're past that point o7 land: if yonder's
Okahanikan and we leave't to windward, ye'll soon see 'em large again as
e'er they were before . . ,"

"Then prithee let us run for't!" Bertrand begged.

"On the other hand," the Captain concluded, with a great tug of the
whiskers, "if we run for't and it isn't Okahanikan, or we miss the deepest
part oft, we're as good as run aground and swamped."

"I say let's try it," Ebenezer urged. "As well risk drowning as freeze for
certain." Indeed, stripped of his boots and outer garments, he had never
been so cold in all his life: despite the storm it was, luckily, no more than a
moderately cold night for late December, even at the thirty-eighth parallel
of north latitude, twelve minutes above which lay the mouth of Okahanikan
Cove; even so, the air was cool, and the wind and rain compounded his
discomfort. His great jaw chattered; he hugged himself and pumped his
legs as best he could on the pitching deck; his heart felt about to wither
inside its lengthy cage of ribs. He recalled an observation made long winters
before by Burlingame: once when the twins had marveled at a tale of the
ferocious tropical heat endured by Magellan or some other intrepid voyager
of the horse latitudes, their tutor had observed that, given a covering of

[ 55^ ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

clothes and ample water, the severest heat is simply more or less uncomfort-
able and can always be dealt with, but cold, on the other hand, is in its
essence sinister and inimical to life. If the image of equatorial climate is
ringed with connotations of sweltering, oppressive heat, at its center lies
those swarming, steaming beds of procreation, the great rain forests; but
to think of what lies above the Arctic Circle is to think of Chaos, oblivion,
the antithesis of life. Even thus (so Burlingame had declared to his
attentive charges) do men speak of the heat of passions, and refer to various
sentiments and social relationships approvingly as ivcrrm, forasmuch as the
metabolism of life itself is warm; but fear, contempt, despair, and deepest
hatred— not to mention facts, logic, analysis, and extreme formality of dress
or manner— however involved they may be in the human experience of
living, and inseparable from it, have forever in the nostrils of the race some
effluvium of the grave and are described in mankind's languages by
adjectives of cold. In sum (Ebenezer remembered dear Henry concluding
with a smile and raking up the fire in his converted summer-house with the
ramrod of a Spanish musket on the wall), hot days may well elicit sweat
and curses, but chill winds cut through tie greatcoats and farthingales of
time, knife to the primal memory of the species, shiver that slumbering
animal in the caves of our soul, and whisper "Danger!" in his hairy ear.
Nor was Bertrand any wanner: if he had objections to his master's
proposal, his teeth were chattering too busily to voice them. There was no
time for debate; the surf now was a muffled thunder well forward. The
Captain ordered the triple-reefed jib and mainsail up and took the helm
himself. The Negroes having their hands full with sheets and gaff-halyards,
he stationed both passengers forward, Bertrand to take soundings with a
long pole (the sloop itself, chine-bottomed, drew less than three feet of
water, and the keel only two or three more) and Ebenezer to watch and
listen for trouble ahead. The luff of the sails cracked like pistol-fire in the
wind* and the heavy boom whipped back and forth over the deck. When
the anchor pendant had been shortened until the grapple barely held the
bow to windward, the Captain put the helm up hard and close-hauled the
jib: the bow fell off at onpe to larboard, both sails filled with a snap that
heeled the sloop far over and bid fair to take out her mast, and the anchor
was desperately weighed. For a moment the fearful forces hung in balance:
surely, Ebenezer thought, the ship must capsize or broach to, or the mast
let go, or the shrouds, or the chain plates, or the sails. But as the next great
wave rolled under, the Captain eased the helm; the bow pointed just a
shade nearer the wind's eye, and to the accompaniment of cheers from the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 553 ]

Negro crew, the sloop righted herself to a reasonable angle of heel, took
the next crest fairly at forty-five degrees, and gained steerageway due south-
wards on a sluggish starboard tack.

Almost at once they found themselves in comparatively calm water,
though the wind howled as furiously as ever; clearly they were in the lee of
whatever land they'd raised, and while their troubles were by no means over,
they were temporarily relieved of the danger of losing their ship from under
them. Moreover, with the island, or whatever, to break the wind, they were
able to proceed with greater caution and control: almost at once, on their
southerly bearing, Bertrand touched bottom with his pole and bawled the
news aft— indeed, the sound of the wind in reeds and trees could be plainly
heard in the darkness dead ahead. The Negroes at once slacked off the
sheets, and the sloop was brought over on a broad reach paralleling the
apparent shoreline, with just enough way to steer by. For ten minutes the
soundings remained constant, at between nine and ten feet of water, and
the trees howled steadily off the starboard beam. Then this land-sound be-
came more general—seemed, in fact, almost to enclose them everywhere
but astern— and at the first brush of the keel against the bottom, heard and
felt by none besides Captain Cairn, he ordered the anchor dropped and
came up into the wind.

"Dear Heav'n!" Ebenezer cried. "Can it be we're safe?"

"Only the mttol can know he is no cuckold," said the Captain, repeating
a proverb Ebenezer had heard before, "and only a dead man is safe from
death." Nevertheless he stroked his beard with obvious relief and admitted
that, barring a shift in the direction of the wind, there seemed to be no
reason why they could not ride out the night at anchor: the grapple was
holding fast in the calmer waters; pole-soundings made while the crew
furled the sails showed eight or nine feet everywhere along the hull, and
more could be expected as the tide ran in.

" Tis some manner of cove, right enough," he declared when the vessel
was properly secured, "else we'd hear more sea astern, instead of trees.
Whether Okahanikan or some other we'll learn anon."

There being, incredibly to Ebenezer, nothing further to do until day-
break, all hands put on the clothes they had discarded some time before
and made shift to warm and rest themselves. The chore of standing watch
for changes in the weather or other perils was assigned to the exhausted
crew until Ebenezer protested that the Negroes had already labored
valiantly and prodigiously the whole night through, with not a moment's

[ 554 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

rest or shelter from the storm, and volunteered to give up his place in the
cabin to them and stand watch with Bertrand in their stead.

"Ye may do as ye please/' the Captain replied, but with a shrug that
implied doubts as to his passengers' good sense. "Keep a lookout lest we
drag our anchor, and take soundings astern if we swing with the tide. For
the rest, don't wake me unless the wind comes round and blows into the
cove."

Having made these injunctions, he retired, but the Negroes, despite
Ebenezer's invitation, made no move to follow after. They had followed
the conversation as impassively as if they understood not a word of it, and
indeed, judging from their reticence, their difficulties with the English
language, and the primitive, half-embarrassed bashfulness— manifested by
averted smiles, great rolls of the eyes, and much shifting of their feet—with
which they declined his offer of shelter, the poet concluded that despite
their dextrous seamanship they were not long out of the African jungles.
This impression was doubly strengthened not long after, when, giving over
his endeavors in their behalf, he commenced his watch with Bertrand: the
two Negroes spread out on the deck between them a spare jibsail, folded
once leech to luff, and commencing one at the head and one at the foot
rolled themselves up in it against the weather. The very adroitness with
which they performed this feat gave it an air of outlandish ritual, and when
it was done and they lay face to if ace as snug and immobile as scroll-pins,
they entertained themselves for a time with a chuckling, husky-whispered
colloquy in some exotic tongue— totally unintelligible to the Englishmen
save for the often-repeated name of their supposed anchorage, Okahanikan,
and another recurrent word which (though Ebenezer was not so certain
on this head) Bertrand declared with much emotion to be Drakepecker:
the name, approximately, of his long-lost votary. So moved was he by this
conviction, in fact, that he expressed his determination to inquire at once
of the Negroes whether they knew any more than he of Drakepecker's
welfare and whereabouts and was restrained only by Ebenezer's reminder
that their fellow castaway had been clearly a fugitive of some sort, the less
$aid about whom, the better for his safety. There were, after all, certain
treacherous slaves and indentured servants given to making an occasional
half pound by informing on their runaway colleagues— who could say with
certainty that neither of the crewmen was such an informer, particularly in
a province where the most popular diversion of high and low alike was
intrigue? The valet was obliged to grant the prudence of this counsel;
reluctantly he took up his watch in the vessel's stern, alee of the cabin,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ J5J ]

where Ebenezer, on his first circuit of the deck, a quarter hour later, found
him wrapped in a bit of canvas himself, and already fast asleep.

" 'Sheart, what a hawk-eyed sentry!" He moved to rouse the man, but
checked himself, put by the angry impulse, and decided to stand the watch
himself so long as all went well. He had, at the hour of their departure
from St. Mary's, little but contempt and mild disgust for Bertrand,. whose
service to him had been a tiresome succession of deceits, betrayals, negli-
gences, and presumptions, nor had he now, assuredly, any new cause for
affection; that he felt it— or at least the absence of its contraries— not only
for the valet but also for Henry Burlingame, he could attribute only to the
violence of the storm, and more especially to the purgative ordeal of three
hours' dancing on the doormat of extinction.

He strolled forward again. The rain had stopped entirely, and though the
wind held strong it came now in quick gusts, the intervals between which
were rather mild. But the best sign of all that the storm had blown its
worst was the break-up of the lowering blanket of cloud into a heavy black
scud that first opened holes for the gibbous moon to breach, then gave
way, broke ranks,, and fled across its face before the whips of wind like the
ragtag of an army in retreat. For the first time since nightfall, Ebenezer
could see beyond the white sprit of the sloop: the inconsistent moon dis-
closed that they were indeed in a cove, a marshy one of ample dimension.
The island into which it made was ample too (so much so, that for all the
poet could tell it might as reasonably have been the mainland), entirely
flat, and, as best once could discern in that light, entirely marshy, its land-
scape relieved only by the loblolly pine trees, alive and black or dead and
silver, that rose in lean clumps here and there from the marsh grass. It was
a prospect by no means picturesque, but under the pale illumination stark,
somber, and beautiful. Ebenezer even thought it serene, for all its bending
to the wild wind, just as he felt the lonely Island of his spirit, though by no
means tranquil, to be peculiarly serene despite the buffet of past fortune
and— his neck-nape tingled at the figure!— the veritable sea of difficulties
with which it was beset.

So did he savor this reflection, and the spiritual peace from which it had
originated, that for a considerable period he was oblivious to wind,
weather, and the passage of time; had the tide swung the ship onto a sand
bar, or the wind moved round the compass, the change would have escaped
his notice. What aroused him, finally, was a sound from the marsh to lar-
board; he started, saw that the moon had risen a great way into the sky,
and wondered whether to rouse the others. But when the sound came

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

again his fears were allayed: it was a hooting chirrup as of doves or owls,
some creature of the marsh as glad as he to see the storm pass over.

"Too-hoo/" The call came a third time, louder and more clear, and "Too-
fioo/" came a clear reply— not from the adjacent marsh but from the deck
immediately at Ebenezer's back. He thrilled with alarm, spun about to see
what bird had perched on the vessel's rail, and was seized at once by the
two Negro crewmen, who had noiselessly unrolled themselves from the
jibsail. One pinioned his arms and held fast his mouth before he was able
to cry out; the other held a sailor's rigging-knife against his throat and
called out over the side, "Too-hoc/ Too-hoo/ Too-hoo/"— whereupon, as if
materialized spontaneously in the reeds, three canoes slid out of hidden
waterways nearby, and half a minute later, to the poet's inexpressible terror,
a party of silent savages was swarming over the rail and creeping with great
stealth towards the cabin.

5: CONFRONTATIONS AND ABSOLUTIONS IN LIMBO

WHAT WITH EVERY MILITARY ADVANTAGE IN THEIR FAVOR— ARMS,

numbers, and absolute surprise— the strange war party of Indians was not
long in attaining its immediate objective, which seemed to be the capture
of the sloop with all hands. Bertrand and the Captain were laid hold of,
wakened with spearheads at their throats, and brought forward, the former
inarticulate with fright, the latter bellowing and sputtering with rage— first
at his captors, then at Ebenezer for not sounding some alarm, and finally
and most violently, when he grasped the situation, at the treacherous mem-
bers of his crew.

"I'll see ye drawn to the scaffold and quartered!" he declared, but the
Negroes only smiled and turned their eyes as if embarrassed by his threats.
The leader of the party spoke sharply in an incomprehensible tongue to
one of his lieutenants, who relayed it in another, equally strange language
to the Negro sailors, and was answered in the same manner; during their
colloquy Ebenezer observed that, though the boarders were dressed almost
identically in deerskin matchcoats and hats of beaver, raccoon, or muskrat,
nearly half their number were not Indians at all, but Negroes. The Captain
remarked this odd fact as well and began at once to rail at them for fugi-
tives and poltroons, but his audience gave no sign of understanding his

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 557 ]

wrathful English. Apparently satisfied that there were no more passengers
aboard the sloop and no more vessels in the cove, the raiders then bound
their captives at wrist and ankle, handed them bodily over the rail, and
obliged them to lie face-down, one to a canoe, throughout a brief but
circuitous passage into the marsh, which, like the earlier phases of the coup,
was executed in total silence. Presently the canoes were secured to a clump
of wax myrtles, the ropes around the prisoners' ankles were exchanged for
a longer one that tethered them by the neck in a line, and the party pro-
ceeded on foot down a path as meandering as the waterway, and so narrow
that even single file it was hard to avoid misstepping into the muck on
either side.

"This is outrageous!" Ebenezer complained. "I never dreamed such
things still happened in 1694, in the very bosom of the Province!"

"Nor I," the Captain replied, from his post in the van of the prisoners.
"Nor e'er heard tell of an Indian town on Bloodsworth Island. TChrist,
'tis naught but marsh from stem to stern, and not dry ground enough to
stand on."

"God save us!" Bertrand groaned— his first words since he'd fallen asleep
some hours before. "They'll scalp our heads and burn us at the stake!"

"Whatever for?" the poet inquired. "We've done 'em no injury, that I

can see."

" Tis e'er the salvages' wont," his valet insisted, finding his voice in ear-
nest. "YeVe but to run afoul of one in your evening stroll, and bang! he'll
skin your pate as ye'd skin a peach! Why, 'tis still the talk in Vansweringen's
how a wench named Kersley was set upon by Indians in Charles County,
just year before last: she was crossing a field of sot-weed 'twixt her own
house and her father's, with the sun still shining and a babe on her arm
besides, but ere she reached her husband's door she had been scalped,
stuck with a knife, and swived from whipple to whitsuntide! And again,
not far from Bohemia Manor "

"Be still," the Captain snapped, "ere your own horrific tales beshit ye."

"Tis all quite well for you to take your scalping without a word,"
Bertrand replied undaunted. "Twas you that steered us hither in the first
place—"

"I/ 'Sblood and 'sbody, sir, 'tis thy good fortune the salvage hath belayed
my two hands, else I'd have thy scalp myself!"

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Ebenezer interposed. "Our case is grave
enough without such talk as this! 'Twas I that hired the passage; you may
hold me answerable for everything if 'twill ease your minds to do so, though

[ CC8 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

it strikes me we'd do better to give over wondering who got us into this
pickle and bend our minds instead to ways and means of getting out."

"Amen," the Captain grunted.

"Still and all," Bertrand said disconsolately, "I must hold Betsy Birdsall
to some account, for had she not rescued me last March in such a deuced
clever manner, I'd not be trussed up here like a trout on a gill string."

"Really!" the Captain cried. "Thou'rt unhinged for very fearl Thou'rt
a babbling Bedlamite!"

"Stay, prithee stay," Ebenezer pleaded. Since the Captain's first sharp
words to Bertrand, the poet's brow had been knitting, and his admoni-
tions were made distractedly. Now he changed the subject to ask the
Captain, "Was't not the Straits of Limbo we entered yonder cove from, or
did I mishear you?"

"That was my guess, sir," the older man said, "unless the tide fetched
us down as low as Holland or Kedge's Straits, which I doubt."

"But if .not, the name of the strait is Limbo? And is there a river mouth
not far hence, with an Indian name?"

"A hatchful of 'em," the Captain replied, not greatly interested, "and
they all have salvage names: Honga, Nanticoke, Wicomico, Manokin,
Annamessex, Pocomoke "

"Wzcomico/ Aye, Wicomico— 'tis the very name Smith mentioned in his
Historie!"

The Captain muttered something unrecognizable but clearly exasper-
ated, and to avoid being thought deranged by fear like his servant, Ebene-
zer explained, in the simplest way possible, what he had been grasping for
since the first mention of the name Limbo Straits and had recalled only
with the help of the word beshit: that Captain John Smith of Virginia,
almost ninety years previously, had discovered those same straits during his
voyage of exploration up the Chesapeake; had, like themselves, encountered
a furious storm therein and suffered the additional discomforts of a
diarrhetic company; had in consequence of his ordeal bestowed the name
Limbo on the place; and finally (through the unhappy agency of Sir Henry
Burlingame, whose part in the adventure Ebenezer thought it kinder not
to mention) had been made prisoner, with all his party, by a band of
warlike Indians— perhaps the grandfathers of their present captors!

"Ye don't tell me," the Captain acknowledged, but his tone implied
that, however arresting the anecdote, it perhaps lost something of its effect
for being told outside an alehouse. Neither did Bertrand appear to be over-
whelmed by the coincidence, for when to his single inquiry, "Prithee, what

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 559 ]

came of 'em?" his master confessed that he had not the slightest idea, the
valet relapsed into gloom.

But despite the uncertainty of their position, which he himself had
characterized as grave, once Ebenezer had wrested the Secret Historie
from his memory he could not but marvel at the parallel between John
Smith's experience and their own. Moreover, the existence of the Historie
itself attested that Smith and at least some of his party had escaped or
been freed by their captors. If only the Jesuit Thomas Smith had been
given a longer installment of the Assembly Journal for safekeeping!

His reflections were interrupted at this point by their arrival at the In-
dians' town, a formidable assemblage of mean little huts arranged in a thick
circle upon an island of relatively high ground. There seemed to be well
over a hundred in all, dome-shaped affairs of small logs and thatched twigs;
surrounded as they were by the marsh, they resembled nothing so much as
a colony of large muskrat houses, the more since their occupants were
cloaked and capped with fur. The citizenry appeared to be sleeping: except
for a single hidden sentry who challenged their approach with a "Too-/ioo/"
from his post in a nearby brush clump, and was answered in kind, the town
was as still as one deserted.

"'Tis passing queer," the Captain grumbled. ''Never saw an Indian
town without a pack o' curs about."

But if the silence of the village was disconcerting, what broke it a few
moments later was nothing less than extraordinary: they had passed through
the ring of dwellings to a clearing or open court in the center of the town,
and during a whispered colloquy between the leader and his black lieuten-
ant, perhaps as to the fate or lodgment of the prisoners, there came from
a hut not far away a sudden wailing that raised the poet's hackles. Through
his fancy, in half a second, passed the image of various Indian cruelties he
had learned of from Henry Burlingame: how they bit the nails from their
victims' fingers, twisted the fingers themselves from the hands, drove
skewers into the remaining stumps, pulled sinews from the arms, tore out
the hair and beard, hung hot hatchets around the neck, and poured hot
sand on scalped heads. Was this the final anguished cry of some earlier
captive?

"Marry come up!" breathed the Captain, and Bertrand's teeth began to
chatter. The wail changed pitch and tone and changed again a moment
afterwards, and again, and again after that, but not until the wailer drew
fresh breath and recommenced did the prisoners grasp the nature of the
sound.

[ 560 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Dear God in Heav'n!" Ebenezer gasped. "Tis someone singing!"
And monstrous unlikelihood though it was, once the notion had be$n
advanced the prisoners recognized the sound to be in truth the voice of a
singing man— a tenor, to be exact. This in itself was wonder enough; far
more incongruous was the fact that his words (viewed retrospectively from
this understanding) were not in a savage tongue at all, but in clear King's
English: I ... saw . . . my-y la-a-dy weep was the line he'd sung and,
having drawn his breath, continued: And Sor-row proud . . . to be advan-
ced so . . .

"B'm'faith, 'tis Dowland he sings! Tis another Englishman!"
"So much the worse for him," the Captain replied, "but no better for us."
"In those fair eyes," the singer went on, "in those . . . fair eyes . . "
"I wonder he hath the spirit to sing," Bertrand marveled, "or his jailer's
leave."

This latter, at least, it would seem he did not have after all, for in the
course of his next asseveration— "Where all perfec-tions keep . . ."—he
broke into a most unmelodious cursing, the substance of which was that if
the so-and-so salvages couldn't let a poor condemned so-and-so sing a so-
and-so song without poking their pigstickers into his so-and-so B-flat, they
had better cut his so-and-so throat that instant, and be damned to them.
"I swear," Ebenezer said, "I have heard that voice before!"
"Haply 'tis the ghost of your Captain What-ye-may-call-him," the Cap-
tain suggested sourly.

. "Nay, i'God " If he had intended to say more, he was prevented from

doing so by the Indians, who, their parley finished, gave a jerk on the
neck-tether and led the prisoners toward the very hut which held the
disgruntled tenor. At its entrance they were unstrung from one another
and refettered individually as for the canoe-passage; throughout the opera-
tion Ebenezer kept squinting his face and shaking his head incredulously,
and when upon another armed Indian's emerging from the hut the tenor at
once began his song afresh, the poet moaned again "I'Godl" and trembled
all over.

Two men then laid hold of Bertrand, who stood nearest the entrance to
the hut, forced him to his knees, and with the assistance of a spear-point
obliged him to crawl through the little doorway, whinnying protests and
pleas for clemency. The Captain too, now that imprisonment was at hand,
let go a fresh torrent of threats and mariner's oaths, but to no avail: down
upon his knees he went, and through the dark hole after Bertrand.
"I say!" the original tenant complained, breaking off his song at the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 561 ]

ruckus. "This is too much! What is't now? 'Sheart! Did I hear an honest
English curse there? Hallo, another!" Ebenezer's turn had come to scram-
ble after. "D'ye mean we've enough for four-man shove-ha'penny? Who
might you gentlemen be, to come calling so late in the day?''

"A pair of travelers and an innocent shipmaster/' the Captain answered,
"blown hither by the storm and betrayed by two black devils of a crew!"
"Ah, there's your crime," the other prisoner said. The hut was absolutely
dark, so that although in its small interior the Englishmen lay like logs in a
woodbox, they could not see their companions even faintly. Their jailer,
after receiving instructions from the Indian leader, remained on guard
outside, and the raiding party dispersed.

"What crime?" the Captain protested. "I've ne'er laid an angry hand on
the rascals since the day I bought 'em!"

"'Tis enough ye bought 'em," replied the tenor. "More than enough. I
ne'er bought or sold a black man in my life, nor harmed a red— how could
I, i'faith, that's but a runaway redemptioner myself? — but t'was enough I
matched the color of them that did."

"What is this talk of slaves and colors?" Bertrand demanded. "D'ye mean
they'll scalp poor hapless servingmen like myself?"
"Worse, friend."

"Worse! What could be worse?" the valet shrieked.
"By'r voice I'd judge ye sing a faltering bass," the other declared. "But if
they do the little trick they've set their minds to, we'll all be warbling
descants within the week."

Of the three new prisoners only Ebenezer grasped the meaning of this
prediction; yet though truly horrified by it, he was too disconcerted, even
confounded, by his prior astonishment to interpret the figures for his
companions. Their host, however, the invisible tenor, did so at once in
plainest literal English, to the extreme consternation of Bertrand and the
Captain.

"I've not been in this wretched province many months," said he, "but I
know well the Governor hath enemies on every side— Jacobites and John
Coode Protestants within, Andros to the south, and the Frenchman to the
north— so that he lives in daily fear of insurrection or invasion. Yet his
greatest peril is one he little dreams of: the complete extermination of every
white-skinned human being in Maryland!"

"Fogh!" cried the Captain. "They're but one town against a province!"

"Far from it," the tenor replied. "Few white men know this town exists,

but it hath lain hid here many and many a year; 'tis the headquarters, as I

[ 562 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

gather, for a host of mutinous salvage chiefs, and a haven for runaway
Negroes. All the disaffected leaders are smuggling in this week for a general
council of war, and ourselves, gentlemen, will be eunuched and burnt for
their amusement."

At this news Bertrand set up such a howling that their guard thrust in
his head, jabbed randomly in the dark with the butt end of his spear, and
muttered unintelligible but unequivocal threats. The tenor replied with
cheerful curses and remarked, when the guard withdrew, "I say, there were
three of ye came in, but I've heard only two speak out thus far: is the other
wight sick, or fallen a-swoon, or what?"

" Tis not fright that holds my tongue, John McEvoy," the poet said with
difficulty. " Tis shock and shame!"

The other prisoner gasped. "Nay, i'faith! Tis past belief! Ah! Ah! Too
good! Ah, marry, too good, too wondrous good! Tell me 'tis not really
Eben Cooke I hear!"

"It is," Ebenezer admitted soberly, and McEvoy's wild laughter brought
new threats from the guard.

"Ohl Ah! Too good! The famous virgin poet and reformer o7 London
whores! 'Twill be a joy to see you roasting by my side. Aha! Oh! Oh!"

"It ill becomes you to rejoice so," the poet replied. "You set out a-pur-
pose to ruin my life, but whate'er injury or misfortune you've suffered at
my hands hath been no wish of mine at all."

"Marry!" Bertrand exclaimed. "Is't the pimp from Pudding Lane, sir,
that tattled to Master Andrew?"

"I take it ye gentlemen know each other," the Captain said almost at
the same time, "and have some quarrel betwixt ye?"

"Why, nay," McEvoy answered sarcastically, "no quarrel at all; 'tis only
that I made his fortune— albeit by accident— and out of gratitude he hath
wrecked my life, hastened my death, and ruined the woman I love!"

"Yet not a bit oft by design, and scarce even with knowledge," Ebenezer
countered, "whereas 'twill please you to know your revenge hath surpassed
your evillest intentions. I have suffered at the hands of rogues and pirates,
been deceived by my closest friend, swindled out of my estate, and obliged
to flee forever in disgrace from my father; what's more, in following me here,
my sister hath been led into Heav'n only knows what peril, while poor
Joan Toast " Here he was overwhelmed with emotion and lost his voice.

"What of her?" snapped McEvoy.

"I will say only what I presume you saw at Maiden: that she hath suf-
fered, and suffers yet, inconceivable tribulations and indignities, in conse-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 563 ]

quence of which she is disfigured in form and face and cannot have long
to live."

McEvoy groaned. "And ye call me to blame for't, wretch, when 'twas
you she followed? FChrist, if my hands were free to wring your neck!"

"I have a burthen of guilt, indeed," Ebenezer admitted. "Yet but for
your tattling to my father you'd ne'er have lost her; or, if you had, 'twould' ve
been to Pudding Lane and not to Maryland. In any case, she'd not have
been raped by a giant Moor and infected with the pox, or ruined by opium,
or whored out nightly to a barnful of salvages!"

At the pronouncement of each of these misfortunes McEvoy moaned
afresh; hot tears coursed from the poet's eyes, ran cold across his temples
and into his ears.

"Whatever thy differences, gentlemen/' the Captain put in, from his posi-
tion between them, " 'tis little to the purpose to air 'em this late in the day.
All our sins will soon enough be rendered out, and there's an end on't."

"Aiee!" Bertrand wailed, and fell to muttering imprecations in which the
name Ralph BiTdsall was frequently to be heard.

"Ffaith, 'tis true enough," McEvoy sighed, referring to the Captain's ad-
monition. "The man who won't forgive his neighbor must needs have struck
a wondrous bargain with his own conscience."

"The best of us," Ebenezer agreed, "hath certain memories in the night
to make him sweat for shame. Once before, in Locket's, I forgave you for
your letter to my father; yet 'twas a bragging sort of pardon, inasmuch as
what you'd done had seemed to make my fortune. Now I have lost title,
fortune, love, honor, and life itself, let me forgive you again, McEvoy, and
beg your own forgiveness in return."

The Irishman concurred, but admitted that since Ebenezer had at no
time set about deliberately to injure either him or Joan Toast, there was
little or nothing to be forgiven.

"Not so, friend— i'Christ, not so!" The poet wept, and related as coher-
ently as he could his trials with Captain Pound, the rape of the Cyprian,
his bargain with the swine-girl, the loss of his estate, and his obligatory
marriage to Joan Toast. In particular he dwelt upon his responsibility in
Joan's downfall, her solicitude during his protracted "seasoning," and the
self-sacrificing magnanimity of her plan for their flight to England, until
not only himself and McEvoy, but the whole imprisoned company were
sniffling and weeping at her goodness.

"For reward/' Ebenezer went on, "she asked no more than that I give

[ 564 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

her my ring for hers, to make her feel less a harlot, and that she be given
the honor of providing for me in London "

"As she did for me," McEvoy reverently interposed.

The Captain sniffled. "She is a very Catholic saint of a whore!"

"And to think I spoke so freely to her at Captain Mitchell's/' Bertrand
marveled, "when we thought her but a scurfy wench of a pig-driver!"

"Stay, sirs," Ebenezer demanded sadly; "you have not heard the begin-
ning of my shame. D'you think, when she made this martyr's proposition, I
refused to hear oft, but ordered her off to England on her own six pounds
and promised to rejoin her when I could? Or did I, at the very least, go
down on my knees before such Christlike charity and kiss the hem of her
precious ragged dress? Imagine the very worst of me, sirs: d'you suppose I
merely thanked her with great feeling, let her whore up her boat fare from
the Indians in the curing-house, and sailed off with her to be her pimp in
London?"

"God forgive ye if ye did," the Captain murmured, apparently too caught
up in the tale to remember the presence of its teller.

"Should God forgive me thrice o'er/' said Ebenezer, "I would bear still
a weight of guilt sufficient to drag ten men to Hell. The fact is, gentlemen,
I accepted the six pounds, sent her off to the curing-house— and fled alone
to the bark in Cambridge, leaving her to perish of her opium, her pox, and
her cruelly broken heart! What say you to that, McEvoy?"

"Forgiven, forgiven!" cried the Irishman. "And God save us all! Methinks
the fire that cooks our poor flesh will be cool beside the flames that roast
our souls!"

Some minutes passed in silence while the company reflected on the story
and on their fate, or merely shivered in the cold draughts that filtered
through the thatch. Presently, in a calmer voice, Ebenezer asked McEvoy
how he had happened to be a redemptioner, and what ill fortune had led
him to Bloodsworth Island. The query elicited a number of great sighing
curses, after which, and several false starts, McEvoy offered the following
explanation:

"I am but two-and-twenty, sirs, as near as one can reckon that hath not
the faintest notion of his birth date; but i'faith, I've been an old man all
my life! My earliest memory is of singing for ha'pennies by Barking Church,
for a legless wretch named Patcher that called himself my father; I was
half dead o' the cold and like to faint away from hunger— for de'il the crust
I'd see of a loaf old Patcher bought with my earnings!— and the reason I
recall it, I had to sing myself alive, as't were, or fall down in the snow, yet

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR . [ $65 ]

I durst not unclench my teeth lest they ruin the song with chattering. Old
Patcher must needs have been a music-master, for whene'er I strayed a
quaver out o' key he'd cane me into tune with his hickory crutch. Many's
the lutist that can play with his eyes closed, but I'll wager 'tis a rare tenor
can sing a come-all-ye with his jaws shut fasti

"Yet sing 'em I did, and true as gospel, as he'd taught me, nor did I e'er
lament my plight or rail at Patcher in my mind; in sooth, 'twas not his
cruelty made me vow to be shed of him but his mistakes upon the lute he
played to accompany my songs! Some winters later, when I was stronger
and he weaker, we were working Newgate Market in a blizzard; Patcher's
fingers were that benumbed, he played as I might with the toes o' my feet,
and the sound so offended my ear, I flew into a passion, snatched up the
hickory-crutch, and laid him low with a single swingeing clout aside the
head. So doth the pupil repeat his lesson!"

"You killed him, then?" asked Ebenezer.

"I did not tarry to find out," McEvoy laughed. "When I saw him fall
o'er upon the cobbles I snatched up his lute and fled. But Newgate Market
was near deserted, and the weather freezing, and though I begged my way
through London for many a year after, singing the songs he taught me
and playing on his lute, I ne'er saw old Patcher again. Thus ended my
apprenticeship: I joined the ranks of those who get their living from the
streets, a journeyman musician and master beggar, and my own man from
that day to this."

"Unhappy child!"

McEvoy sniffed contemptuously. "So speaks the virgin poet."

•"Nay, John; for all your sorry trials you were still an innocent amongst
the wolves."

"Say rather a whelp amongst his elders, and no mean hand at wolfing.
My virginity I lost to the aged whores that nursed my boyish ailments, but
innocence I never lost, nor fear nor faith in God and man— for the reason
one cannot lose what he never hath possessed. I played in taverns for my
bed and board, and whene'er I wanted for money— but 'tis no news to the
Laureate that your true artist need not be handsome to please the ladies;
his talent serves for face, place, and grace together, and for all he hath
been sired by a legless beggar upon a drunken gutter-tart, if his art hath
power to stir he may be wined and dined by dukes and spread the knees
of young marquesas! In short, when I grew fond of inventing melodies, I
invested in the love of wealthy women "

"Invested!" cried Bertrand, who to this point had expressed no interest

[ 566 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

in the tale. "Tis an uncommon profitable investment that pays cash
dividends on no capital!"

"Nay, don't mistake me/' McEvoy said seriously. "Time was my capital,
the precious mortal time one wastes a-wooing; and my return was time as
well— hours bought from singing for my supper, and from doing the hun-
dred mean chores a poor man doth for himself perforce. Twas an invest-
ment like any other, and I chose it for a proper tradesman's reason: it paid
a higher return on my capital than did aught el§e, in mortal time."

"Yet you must own 'twas something callous," ventured the poet.

"No more than any honest business," McEvoy insisted. "If any hearts
were injured, why, the wounds were self-inflicted; I promised naught, and
always kept my promise, and there's an end on't."

"But surely Joan Toast "

"I have said naught o' Joan Toast," the Irishman reproved. "'Tis the
wives and daughters o' the rich I did my business with, that call their
pandering patronage, and are much given to fornication in the noble cause
of Art. Joan Toast was a penceless guttersnipe like myself— and an artist
as well, in her way, only her instruments were different from my own."

"Ha! Well saidl" cried Bertrand. Ebenezer made no comment.

"I was eighteen when first I met her: she had been hired to service a
certain debauched young peer, whose wife, not to be outdone, hired me to
play the same game with herself. The four of us sat down to pheasant and
Rhenish, for all the world like two pairs o' newlyweds, which pleased his
lordship's jaded fancy mightily; in sooth, as the wine got hold of him he
made a series of lewd proposals, each more unnatural than the one before.
And since perversion, like refinement, is an arc, the which, if ye but extend
it far enough, returns upon itself, by the evening's end naught tickled the
wretch's lust so much as the thought of taking his lawful wife to bed! Joan
Toast and I were turned out together, and as we'd done no more than eat
a meal to earn our hire, we made a night oft in her little room near
Ludgate. E'en then, at seventeen, she was the soul o' worldliness: ill-tutored
as I was, she made me think of ancient Rome, or ancient Greece, or realms
more ancient still; she was fresh and full of spirit as a blooded colt, but her
eyes were old as the world, and in her gestures was the history of the race.
Small wonder his lordship craved her: she was the elixir of her sex, and who
swived her swived no woman, but Womankind!

"We stayed some'days there in her chamber, sending out for food till our
hire was spent; when we went down again together to the street^ 'twas with

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 567 ]

a certain pact between us, that lasted till the night o' your wager with
Ben Oliver."

"In plain English," remarked the Captain, "ye was her pimp."

"In plainer," McEvoy replied without hesitation, "we twain were to the
arts o' love like the hands o' the lutist to his music: together, at our proper
work, ^e could set Heaven's vaults a-tremble; all else was the common
business of survival, to be got o'er by whatever means were most expedient.
Besides, a man asked no questions of Joan Toast— not in those days, sir!
The miracle was that such a creature lived; I'd no more have quarreled
with her arrangements -than I'd quarrel with the sum o' history, or cavil
at the patterns of the stars."

"For all that," Bertrand remarked, "thou'rt no nearer Maryland now
than when ye started, and this night— worse luck!— shan't last forever."

"Let him tell on," the Captain said. " 'Tis either a tale or the Shuddering
Fearfuls in straits like these."

"Aye, John, tell on," Ebenezer encouraged. "You can do naught to ease
my guilt, but it may be your tale will lessen by one the questions Til ne'er
find answers to. How is't you knew Joan Toast had followed me? And how
is't you fell into Tom Tayloe's hands?"

"Tayloe! Ye've heard o' Tom Tayloe and me?"

Ebenezer explained the circumstances of his acquaintanceship with
Tayloe and related the substance, as best he could recall it, of what the
corpulent seller of indentured servants had told him en route to Cooke's
Point aboard Richard Sowter's boat. McEvoy was vastly amused; indeed,
he laughed as heartily at the news of Tayloe's indenture to the cooper
William Smith as if he were hearing the story in Locket's instead of a
prison-hut, and the Captain was moved to observe, "Methinks 'tis he
should be merry, not you, sir; he hath the better bargain after all!"

"Aye and he hath," Ebenezer agreed. "But e'en were we not here in the
very vestibule of death, 'twould ill become us to jest at the man's ill luck."

But McEvoy only laughed again. "What humanists death hatches out of
menl Ye have forgot what a worthless wretch Tom Tayloe was, that preyed
on masters and servants alike!"

"A wretch he might have been," the poet allowed, "and deserving of your
prank; but his time is no less mortal than our own, and to rob him of four
years oft is to carry the jest too far." He sighed. "I 'Christ, when I think of
the weeks and years I've squandered! Precious, precious mortal time! I be-
grudge every day I spent not writing verse!"

"And I every night I slept alone in London," Bertrand said fervently.

[ [-68 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"What matter if a man lives seven years or seventy? His years are not an
eyeblink to eternity, and de'il the way he spends 'em-whether steering ships
or scribbling verse, or building towns or burning 'em— he dies like a May
fly when his day is done, and the stars go round their courses just the same.
Where's the profit and loss o' his labors? He'd as well have stayed abed, or
sat his bum on a bench and watched the blind wights curse and labor
over naught."

Although Ebenezer stirred uneasily at these words, remembering his
state of mind at Magdalene College and in his room in Pudding Lane, he
nevertheless reaffirmed his belief in the value of human time, arguing from
the analogy of precious stones and metals that the value of commodities
increases inversely with their supply where demand is constant, and with
demand where supply is constant, so that mortal time, being infinitesimal
in supply and virtually infinite in demand, was therefore infinitely precious
to mortal men.

"Marry come up!" McEvoy cried impatiently. "Ye twain remind me of
children I saw once at St. Bartholomew's Fair, that queued up to ride in
a little red pony cart . . ."

He did not bother to explain his figure, but Ebenezer understood it
immediately, or thought he understood it, for he said, at once, "Thou'rt
right, McEvoy; there is no argument 'twixt the Captain and myself. I recall
the day my sister and I turned five and were allowed an extra hour 'twixt
bath and bed. Mrs. Twigg would soap our faces, dress us in our nightclothes,
and set her hourglass running there in the nursery; we could do whatever
we wished with the time, but when the sand had run 'twas off to bed and
no lingering! I'faith, what a treasure that hour seemed: time for any of a
hundred pleasures! We fetched out the cards, to play some game or other—
but what silly game was worth such a wondrous hour? I vowed I'd build
a castle out of blocks, and Anna set to drawing three soldiers upon a
paper—but neither of us could pursue his sport for long, for thinking the
other had chosen more wisely, so that anon we made exchange and were
no more pleased. We cast about more desperately among our toys and
games— whereof any one had sufficed for an hour's diversion earlier in the
day— but none would do, and still the glass ran on! Any hour save this
most prime and measured we had been pleased enough to do no more
than talk, or watch the world at work outside our nursery window, but
when I cried 'Heavy, heavy hangs over thy head/ to commence a guessing
game, Anna fell straightway to weeping, and I soon joined her. Yet e'en
our tears did naught to ease our desperation; indeed, they but heightened

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 569 ]

it the more, for all the while we wept, our hour was slipping by. Now
bedtime, mind, we'd ne'er before looked on as evil, but that sand was like
our lifeblood draining from some wound; we sat and wept, and watched
it flow, and the upshot oft was, we both fell ill and took to heaving, and
Mrs. Twigg fetched us off to bed with our last quarter hour still in the
glass/'

"Which teaches us ?" questioned McEvoy.

"Which teaches us," Ebenezer responded sadly, "that naught can be
inferred to guide our conduct from the fact of our mortality: Epicurus, in
this respect, was not wiser nor less wise than Alexander. Nonetheless, if
Maiden were mine, I'd set Tom Tayloe free forthwith."

"But in the meanwhile I may laugh at him all I please," McEyoy added,
"which— philosophy be damned— is what I'd do in any case. D'ye want to
hear my tale or no?"

Ebenezer declared that he did indeed, and apologized for the interrup-
tion, although in fact his interest in McEvoy's adventures waned with every
speeding minute of the night, and he felt in his heart that his digression
had been considerably more germane to their present plight.

"Very well, then," the Irishman began; "the fact oft is, I had at first
no mind at all to come to Maryland. When Joan Toast left me I knew
we were over and done— 'tis her wont to give all or naught, as well ye
know— yet no folly is too immense for the desperate lover, nor any con-
trary fact so plain that Hope cannot paint it to his colors. To be brief, I
feared she'd follow ye off to Maryland, and in order to intercept her I took
lodgings in the posthouse, put on my grandest swagger, and gave out to
all and sundry I was Ebenezer Cooke, the Laureate of Maryland . . ,"

" 'Sheart, another!" Ebenezer cried. "Maryland hath a very infestation
of laureate poets!"

" Twas a wild imposture," McEvoy said good-humoredly, "Heav'n knows
what I meant to do if Joan Toast sought me out! But in any case my
tenure of office was wondrous brief: I had scarce raised a general toast to
the Maryland muse ere a gang of bullies burst in with some tale of a stolen
ledger-book and, being told I was Master Eben Cooke the poet, they
straightway hauled me off to jail."

"La, now!" laughed Bertrand. "There's a mystery cleared, sirs, that hath
plagued me these many months whene'er I thought oft! When I came
to the posthouse to hide from Ralph Birdsall's knife— that I wish I'd suf-
fered, and been a live eunuch instead of a dead one!— what I mean, when
I asked about for the Laureate, I heard he'd been fetched off to prison.

[ ry0 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Twas that very tragedy inspired me to take his place and flee to Plymouth;
yet when Master Eben found me on the Poseidon, he vowed he'd ne'er
been set upon by Ben Bragg's men and thought me a liar. Doth this news
not absolve me, sir?"

"No fear of that," replied the poet. "Tis too late in the day for aught
but general absolution. There are some small lacunae yet, as't were, in the
text of your pretty tale— but let them go. What did you then, McEvoy?
I pray you were not held long for my little theftl"

"Only till the following mom," McEvoy said, "when Bragg came round
and saw he'd hooked the wrong fish. By then I'd lost my taste for farther
nonsense; I resolved to quit my search for Joan and commence the mighty
labor of forgetting her. I returned to my old pursuits among the wealthy;
took up my lute and played the tuneful gigolo. But though I had some
small success at first, my years with Joan had spoiled me: the ladies felt
a small scorn in my rutting, belike, or heard some certain coldness in my
voice ... In any case I was soon unemployed and anon was driven to
lute it on the street corners for my living, by Botolph's Wharf and the
Steel Yard, and Newgate Market,, where my life began. What I earned
I spent on whores, to no avail: when a man hath lain a thousand nights
with his beloved and no other, he knows her from crown to sole with
all his senses— every muscle, every pore, every sigh; every action and re-
action of her limbs and heart and mind he knows as he knows his own.
Put some other wench beside him in the dark: her mere displacement of
the air he feels at once as an alien thing; the simple press of her on the
pallet is foreign to his senses; her very breathing startles him, so different
in pitch and rhythm! She puts out an ardent hand: his flesh recoils as
from some brute-o'-the-forest's paw. They come together: i'Christ, how
clumsy!— their arms, that would embrace, knock elbows or can find no place
to lie; their legs entangle, that would entwine; it seems their chins and
noses will not fit. He would caress her: he pokes her ribs instead, or scratches
her with a hangnail. Some amorous word or gesture takes him by surprise:
he is unmanned, or like a green recruit, shoots his bolt ere the issue is
fairly joined. In short, though he hath been to his beloved a master lutes-
man upon his lute, now he finds he hath bestrode a violincello, whereof
he knows not gooseneck from /-hole; he hits no string aright, fingers blindly
to no purpose, and in the end hath but a headache from his plucking."

The whole company, despite their position, were amused by this apos-
trophe; Bertrand even laughed aloud and begged McEvoy to continue in

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 57! ]

the same vein, that he might cheat the Indians' design by dying of mirth.
But the Irishman resumed his discourse in a sober voice:

"Seeing that whores were not my medicine, I turned to rum and soaked
myself to oblivion each night. My hands grew clumsy on the lute, my voice
thickened and cracked, my ear went dull, and every night required more
rum than the night before; so that anon I could not beg enough to drink
on, and had perforce to turn to theft to gain my ends. Then one night—
'twas a full three months after your departure— a sailorman gave me a shill-
ing to sing Joan's Placket Is Torn for him, and when I had done, declared
himself so pleased that he filled me with rum at his own expense. Twas
my guess he had some queer design— and little I cared, so he let me drink
my fill! But I was wrong . . ."

"God help ye, then," the Captain muttered. "I can guess the rest: Ye,
was spirited off?"

"I fell senseless in some inn near Baynard's Castle," McEvoy said, "and
woke fettered in the 'tweendecks of a moving ship. At first I had no notion
whither we sailed or to what end I had been kidnaped, but anon some
among us, that went unfettered, declared they were redemptioners bound
for Maryland and explained 'twas not uncommon for a certain sort of cap-
tain to fill out his cargo with wharf rats like myself and the half-dozen
others who had waked to find themselves leg-ironed to a ship.

"Presently the first mate made us a speech, whereof the substance was
that we were in his debt for being saved from our old profligacy and
ferried without charge to a land where we might build our lives anew, and
that any man of us who honored this obligation and pledged himself to
act accordingly would be freed of his leg iron then and there. All the rest
were glad enough to swear whatever lying pledge he pledged 'em, but
when I saw that this pious first mate was the very wretch who had undone
me the night before, I let fly such a grapeshot of curses that he mined
my mouth with his boot and swore he'd starve me into virtue or into
Hell ere the voyage was done.

"Now a man like me, that hath been an orphan beggar all his life and
feels neither shame nor poverty, is as free a man as any thou'rt like to
find, and 'tis no wonder he grows most jealous of his liberty. "Tis true
I'd been jailed not long since for petty stealing, and once ere that when
I posed as Laureate; but both times 'twas my owu misdoings brought me
to jail, and since by liberty is meant one's rights, 'tis no loss of liberty to
be justly jailed for crime. Contrariwise, 'tis a gross offence against liberty
to be fettered against one's wishes and for no just cause, and the wights

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 571 ]

the same vein, that he might cheat the Indians' design by dying of mirth.
But the Irishman resumed his discourse in a sober voice:

"Seeing that whores were not my medicine, I turned to rum and soaked
myself to oblivion each night. My hands grew clumsy on the lute, my voice
thickened and cracked, my ear went dull, and every night required more
rum than the night before; so that anon I could not beg enough to drink
on, and had perforce to turn to theft to gain my ends. Then one night—
'twas a full three months after your departure—a sailorman gave me a shill-
ing to sing Joan's Placket Is Torn for him, and when I had done, declared
himself so pleased that he filled me with rum at his own expense. 'Twas
my guess he had some queer design— and little I cared, so he let me drink
my fill! But I was wrong . . ."

"God help ye, then," the Captain muttered. "I can guess the rest: Ye
was spirited off?"

"I fell senseless in some inn near Baynard's Castle," McEvoy said, "and
woke fettered in the 'tweendecks of a moving ship. At first I had no notion
whither we sailed or to what end I had been kidnaped, but anon some
among us, that went unfettered, declared they were redemptioners bound
for Maryland and explained 'twas not uncommon for a certain sort of cap-
tain to fill out his cargo with wharf rats like myself and the half-dozen
others who had waked to find themselves leg-ironed to a ship.

"Presently the first mate made us a speech, whereof the substance was
that we were in his debt for being saved from our old profligacy and
ferried without charge to a land where we might build our lives anew, and
that any man of us who honored this obligation and pledged himself to
act accordingly would be freed of his leg iron then and there. All the rest
were glad enough to swear whatever lying pledge he pledged 'em, but
when I saw that this pious first mate was the very wretch who had undone
me the night before, I let fly such a grapeshot of curses that he ruined
my mouth with his boot and swore he'd starve me into virtue or into
Hell ere the voyage was done.

"Now a man like me, that hath been an orphan beggar all his life and
feels neither shame nor poverty, is as free a man as any thou'rt like to
find, and 'tis no wonder he grows most jealous of his liberty. Tis true
I'd been jailed not long since for petty stealing, and once ere that when
I posed as Laureate; but both times 'twas my own misdoings brought me
to jail, and since by liberty is meant one's rights, 'tis no loss of liberty to
be justly jailed for crime. Contrariwise, 'tis a gross offence against liberty
to be fettered against one's wishes and for no just cause, and the wights

[ 572 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

who swore that scandalous oath to shed their leg irons, so far from gaining
any liberty thereby, did but surrender the dearest liberty of all— the right
to rail against injustice."

"There is much wisdom in what you say/' Ebenezer remarked, consid-
erably impressed by McEvoy's words and humbled anew, not only by his
suspicion that under similar circumstances he would not have displayed
such costly integrity, but also by his conviction— no less disquieting for its
present irrelevancy— that McEvoy was far more worthy of Joan Toast
than was he, and had been so from the beginning.

"Wise or foolish, 'twas my sentiment in the matter/' McEvoy said, "and
albeit I tasted the whoreson's leather oft and oft in the days that followed,
at least 'twas ne'er by licking his boots I learnt the flavor. He did not quite
starve me to death as he had promised, whether because he took such
pleasure in kicking me or because he was loath to let me perish unrepentant.
I was moved from the 'tweendecks into the hold lest I start a mutiny by
my example, and I ne'er saw daylight again till the end of the voyage,
when they fetched me up on deck to sell with the rest."

"Whereupon," Ebenezer put in, "if Tayloe told me aright, you straight-
way leaped into the river and made for your liberty— but they fished you
out."

"Aye, and saved my life, for I learned too late I had not strength enough
to swim ten strokes. And on reflection it seemed a fair choice to go with
Tom Tayloe; I judged his brains to be as swinish as his manner and his
appearance, and guessed 'twould be no great matter to outwit him at the
proper moment. Nor was I mistaken, as ye heard from the swine himself.
I only wish my friend Dick Parker had been less rash; to be sure, he was
a king, and there's the difference— but I've not told ye about Dick Parker,
have I, now? Ah well, no matter: we swim in an ocean of story, but
a tumblerful slakes our thirst. Besides, the night's nigh done, is*t not?
To conclude, then, gentlemen; I bartered Tom Tayloe for a horse, as Eben
hath told— and a foundered jade at that, but worth a score o' servant-brokers
—and since Fd learnt I was in Maryland I resolved to ride out privily to
Cooke's Point, merely to satisfy myself that Joan was there and happy
in her choice." He laughed. "La, what rot is that? I rode out in hopes
she'd had her fill of innocence! I well knew my wretched case would
move her to pity and I prayed she might mistake that pity for love. 'Twas
a desperate piece o' wishing and proved false in two respects: her plight,
I found, was far more wretched than mine, but neither pox nor opium
nor cruelty, nor the face o' death itself— how much less pityl— could turn
her from her course once she had set it.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 573 ]

"I did not tarry: Tom Tayloe, I supposed, would turn the country in-
side out to find the fugitive that gulled him. I resolved to make my way
to Virginia, if I could find it, or Carolina, and haply join some bloody
crew o' pirates. To this end I joined company with a runaway Negro slave
that had been chained with me in the ship's hold— one o' Parker's chief
lieutenants, he was, named Bandy Lou, that had learnt a mickle English.
'Twas his idea we make for Bloodsworth Island, which he had heard was
a-swarm with fugitives like ourselves. We didn't know they love a white
man as the Devil loves holy water, and when we learned it, 'twas all too
late: Bandy Lou they welcomed as a brother, but me, for all his pleadings,
they trussed up and put aside against the day "

"Hi there!" the Captain interrupted. "What's that I hear?"

McEvoy left his sentence unfinished, and the prisoners strained to listen.
From far off in the marshes came a series of sharp cries, like the cawing of
a crow, and the guard outside their hut responded in kind.

"Some new arrivals to the grand Black Mass," McEvoy murmured.
"They've been coming in every night this week."

The signal cries were repeated, and then in the distance the prisoners
could hear a deep, rhythmical mutter, as of many men rumbling a soft
chant as they marched. The sentry outside sprang up and cried to the
slumbering village some terse announcement, which, though incompre-
hensible to the Englishmen, effected an immediate stir among the huts.
People chattered with subdued excitement and bustled about the square;
sharp orders were issued here and there; new logs clumped and crackled
on the fire; and the chant grew clearer and stronger all the while.

"I'f aith^ 'tis like no Indian song I've heard before," the Captain whispered.

"Nay, 'tis a black man's chanting, by the pitch and rhythm oft," McEvoy
replied. "I heard Dick Parker and Bandy Lou sing the like oft in the
ship's hold, and the Africans hereabouts have done the same for the last
few nights. 'Sheart, but it makes the hackles rise! Tis no good news for
us, methinks."

"Why is that?" Ebenezer asked sharply.

"They have been waiting for their two chief men to smuggle across the
Bay," McEvoy said. "One is the leader of the blacks, and the other's the
strongest of the salvage kings that the Governor hath unseated. That much
I know from Bandy Lou, that whispered to me some days back through
the wall of this hut. They've ne'er been reckless enough to sing so loud
before: I'll wager 'tis their majesties have come to town, and the circus
is ready to start."

[ 574 I THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

And indeed,, as the new arrivals filed into the common, the villagers threw
caution to the winds: they took up the chant, cried out wild cries, beat
drums to mark the rhythm, and— as best the prisoners could judge from
sound alone—commenced some vigorous dance around the fire. Bertrand
sucked his breath and moaned, and Ebenezer, try as he might to sustain
his courage, began to tremble involuntarily in every limb. Not even Mc-
Evoy could quite preserve his self-control: he fell to intoning oaths and
curses in a hissing whisper, like paternosters recited with teeth on edge.
Only Captain Cairn remained calm. "'Twere folly to wait for their
wretched tortures," he declared soberly. "We're all dead men at the end
of the chapter in any case; why should we suffer ten times o'er for their
heathen pleasure?"

"What is't you propose, then?" Ebenezer demanded. "Suicide? Me-
thinks I'd gladly take my own life and have done with't, if I had a pistol.
'Twere better than their cursed butcher-block and bonfire!"

"We've no means to do the job ourselves," the Captain said. "But it
may be still in our hands to die fast or a piece at a time. If they carry us
out bodily there's no hope, but if they string us together by the neck
and free our feet to walk,, as they did before, we must make a run for't,
all together, and pray they'll stop us with spears and arrows."

" Twould never work," McEvoy scoffed. "They'd simply overhaul us and
fetch us back to their carving-knives."
Bertrand wailed,

"Besides," McEvoy added, "I am a Catholic, albeit no model parishioner,
and I shan't destroy myself in any case."

"Then here's a better plan," said the Captain, "that ye may help us in
with no harm to your faith. Our hands and feet are bound, but we have
still the movement of our knees: let Mr. Cooke's man place his neck 'twixt
his master's legs, and me place my neck 'twixt yours, and we twain be
throttled without delay to end our miseries. Then do ye the same for
Mr. Cooke, when he hath done, and thou'rt left to be murthered as ye
wish by the Indians. What say ye to that?"

"FGod!" whispered Ebenezer; yet appalled though he was by the old
man's proposal, he could scarcely deny that being strangled was far less
painful than being emasculated and burnt alive.

As it turned out, he was not obliged to choose after all; whether because
the new arrivals were not the visiting royalty from across the Bay or
because the sacrificial festivities were to be saved until the end of their
dark conclave, the celebration presently subsided, and day dawned to find

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 575 ]

the prisoners still unmolested. Too anxious to feel much relief, they re-
garded one another silently— McEvoy, Ebenezer observed, had lost a
quarter of his weight and some of his teeth, and had of necessity grown
a beard— nor were they ever again as talkative as they had been that first
night. The days passed— two, seven, ten— and though the prisoners were
never once permitted out of the hut, they could hear the daily-increasing
activity in the town.

"Ffafth, 'tis like the Convocation o' Cardinals!" McEvoy declared.

"And God help us when they've picked their Pope," Bertrand added.

No one mentioned the Captain's proposal again, but it must have been
on everyone's mind as it was on Ebenezer's, for when one early morning
they heard their guard approached by some manner of delegation (to whose
stern inquiries, delivered in exotic glottal tongue, he responded with the
humble alacrity of subordination), as one man they sucked in their breaths
and went rigid.

"Make haste!" the Captain urged. "They've come to fetch us!"

"Then fetch us they shall," McEvoy grumbled. "I'm not a murtherer."

Just then the hide-flap door of the hut was thrown open: cold air
rushed in, and the dancing light of the fire, and against the grey-white
dawn they could see the stiff black shapes of men,

"You, then, in the name o' God!" The Captain twisted towards Eben-
ezer, and his voice grew shrill. "I beg ye sir; throttle me now, this instant,
ere they lay hands on us! Here, quickly, for the love o9 Christ!"

He wrenched himself across Bertrand toward the poet's trembling knees.
Ebenezer had no voice to say him nay; he could only shake his head. But
even had he been both willing and able, there was not time to do the
deed: the black silhouettes closed in, bent over them; black hands laid
hold of their ankles and legs; black voices chuckled and grunted. One by
one the terrified white men were dragged outside by the heels.

6: HIS FUTURE AT STAKE, THE POET REFLECTS ON A
BRACE OF SECULAR MYSTERIES

THE COURTYARD OR COMMON ENCLOSED BY THE INDIAN TOWN WAS

patchy with thin, wet snow, which had also whitened the tops of all the
mound-shaped dwellings. The air was raw and saturated, but not bitter

[576] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

cold; in fact, a mass of quite temperate air had moved over the Bay, with
the result that a great fog enveloped the island. Swirls of mist like ragged
spirits swept out of the marsh, given voice by invisible gulls: they bent over
the houses, writhed and brooded across the common, and were blown
with a wild, falling cry toward the straits.

Despite the fog and the early hour, Ebenezer could see a great number
of people all about, some in Scotch cloth and English woolens, but most in
hides and furs and matchcoats. The women were making small fires near
their huts to cook on and preparing food for the morning meal; the men,
for the most part, were occupied with tobacco and conversation around
several larger fires in the common itself, Negroes and Indians together: there
was a rustle of general talk, as well as much parleying by signs and gestures,
In the center of the court the little watch fire of the night had been so
fueled with resinous pine logs that its blaze, flashing orange upon the fog,
seemed more ceremonial than useful. The heat of it had melted the snow
in a sizeable circle, about whose perimeter were ranged a solemn score
of dignitaries, black and red— no doubt the various rebel chiefs and their
lieutenants; and just outside the quadrants of their circle, four separate
parties of men were raising ominous twelve-foot posts in hip-deep holes.

When the prisoners were all on their feet, a grinning Negro from the
deputation that had fetched them out stepped up to McEvoy and said in
English, "You come to judgment now: no more nights in there, ha?" He
rolled his eyes towards the prison-hut.

"Thou'rt a black imp o' Satan/' McEvoy grumbled. "I would ye'd jumped
to the fishes with Dick Parker!"

The Negro— whom Ebenezer took to be McEvoy's erstwhile companion
Bandy Lou— flashed his teeth in amusement and gave sharp orders to his
men, who cut the thongs from the prisoners' ankles and led them towards
the awful posts. The poet's knees began to fail; his jailers were obliged
to support as well as direct him. The hum of conversation on every side
changed to a concerted murmur, and then died away; except for tie myriad
crackling fires the common was silent, and dark faces regarded the white
men coldly as they passed. The men at the central fire turned round at
their approach, and a much-painted elder among them nodded towards
the nearest of the posts just being tamped into position.

"You be judged by three kings," the smiling Negro repeated to McEvoy.
''Others stay here/'

None of the prisoners spoke. It appeared that the dread triumvirate was
not at the fireside after all, for the Irishman was led toward a larger spec-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 577 ]

imen of muskrat-house across the common. Ebenezer and Bertrand were
bound each to a post by the ankles and wrists; the feel of his position
brought the poet near to swooning, so clearly did it recall the legion of
martyred men. How many millions had been similarly bound since the
race began, and for how many reasons put to the unspeakable pain of fire?
But he strove to put by the swoon, in hopes of resummoning it when
he would need it more desperately.

The Captain, meanwhile, had been obliged to stand by while the third
and fourth posts were being raised and tamped. He stood quietly, head
bowed, as though resigned to the horrors ahead; his guards, absorbed in
plumbing the massive posts, ignored him. Suddenly he sprang to life^
leaped behind and away from them and struck out across the common.
A shout went up; men scrambled to their feet, snatched their spears, and
hurried after him. Ebenezer craned his neck to watch, expecting to see
the old man ran through like a squab on the spit» but the Indians held
back. The Captain ran for a gap between two council-fires, and was faced
with a wall of spears held at the ready; he hesitated, spun about, and was
confronted with a similar wall. This time, as if abandoning some tenuous
hope of escape and returning to his original purpose, he thrust out his
chest and lunged straight for the spears; but their bearers drew back and
merely blocked his way with their arms and shafts. He wheeled again,
his arms still bound behind, and hopped madly in another direction, with
the same result. The ranks were closed now in a large circle around him,
and it being quite clear that he could not escape even to the marsh (whence,
to be sure, they could have retrieved him easily enough) they began to
laugh at his furious endeavor. Again and again the old man rushed at the
spears; Ebenezer scarce knew whether relief or chagrin was in order as
each new pass was thwarted. At length, unable to screw up his desperate
resolve again, the Captain stood still in the center of the circle, gave a
wavering cry, and fell. His tormentors dispersed, still chuckling; the guards
returned him to the post, now erect and ready to accommodate him, and
began piling twigs and branches at the feet of all three unfortunates.

His skin awash with cold sweat, Ebenezer looked away and saw McEvoy
reappear from the royal palace with his smiling escort. The Irishman's face
was winced up in a curious expression— whether anger, abhorrence, or fear,
Ebenezer could not tell, but he assumed when he saw his companion made
fast to the one remaining post that the curious "judgment" had not been
a pardon.

However, he was mistaken. " Tis the Devil's own wonder of a happen-

[ cy8 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

stance!" McEvoy cried over to him, in a voice as strange and twisted as
his expression. "They fetched me before their three kings for sentencing,
and two of 'em were scurfy salvages, but the third was my friend Dick
Parker, the wight I was chained in the hold with! I thought he was drowned
and forgot, but i'faith, he's the king o' this pack o' black heathen! This
scoundrel Bandy Lou hath known it these many days and said naught
oft; he was Dick Parker's chief lieutenant back in Africa!"

Ebenezer was unable to marvel at this coincidence; indeed, he won-
dered whether McEvoy had not been deranged by fear. Could a sane
man relate such bootless trifles while his pyre was a-building round his
feet?

Only then did he observe that though his own pyre was completed, as
were those of Bertrand and the senseless Captain, not a twig had been
laid at McEvoy's post, nor did the guards seem about to fetch any.

"God help me, Eben!" the Irishman shouted. "They mean to turn me
loose! Dick Parker hath spared me!" His eyes ran with tears, but not tears
of joy. Ebenezer thrilled with horror. "As God is my witness," McEvoy
cried on, "I begged and pled for ye, Eben, by whatever friendship had
been 'twixt Dick Parker and myself. Ye was my brother, I told him, and
dear as life to me; but the others were for burning the four of us, and
'twas all Dick Parker could manage to spare me. As't is I must watch ye
suffer there all this day and tomorrow, till their council's done, and then
see ye burnt!"

"He lies!" Bertrand yelled from his post across the way. "The pimp hath
bartered our skins to save his own!"

"Nay, I swear't!" McEvoy protested. The Negroes and Indians around
the central fire regarded the speakers in turn without expression; one could
not tell whether they understood the shouted colloquy or not. "Whatever
hath been betwixt us in the past, 'tis all behind us; ye mustn't believe I hold
aught against ye, or biased your case with Dick Parker!"

"I quite believe you," Ebenezer said. He had in fact felt a moment
of wrath at McEvoy's news; would he, after all, have left London in the
first place had not McEvoy betrayed him to his father? But he soon over-
came his anger, for despite the extremity qf his position, or perhaps be-
cause of it, he was able to see that McEvoy had only been following his
principles honestly, as had Ebenezer his own; one could as easily blame
old Andrew for reacting so strongly, Joan Toast for occasioning the wager,
Ben Oliver for proposing it, Anna for crossing alone to Maryland, Burlin-
game for— among other things— persuading him to disembark in St. Mary's,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 579 ]

or Ebenezer himself, who by any of a hundred thousand acts might have
altered the direction of his life. The whole history of his twenty-eight years
it was that had brought him to the present place at the present time; and
had not this history taken its particular pattern, in large measure, from the
influence of all the people with whom he'd ever dealt, and whose lives
in turn had been shaped by the influence of countless others? Was he
not, in short, bound to his post not merely by the sum of human history,
but even by the history of the entire universe, as by a chain of numberless
links no one of which was more culpable than any other? It seemed to
Ebenezer that he was, and that McEvoy was not more nor less to blame
than was Lord Baltimore, for example,, who had colonized Maryland, or
the Genoese adventurer who had discovered the New World to the Old.

This conclusion, which the poet had reached more by insight than by
casuistical speculation, was followed by another, whose logic ran thus: The
point in space and time whereto the history of the world had brought him
would be nothing perilous were it not for the hostility of the Indians and
Negroes. But it was their exploitation by the English colonists that had
rendered them hostile; that is to say, by a people whom the accidents of
history had made in many ways superior— Ebenezer did not doubt that
his captors, if circumstances were reversed, would do just what the Eng-
lish were doing. To the extent, then, that historical movements are ex-
pressions of the will of the people engaged in them, Ebenezer was a just
object for his captors' wrath,, for he belonged, in a deeper sense than
McEvoy had intended in his remark of some nights past, to the class of
the exploiters; as an educated gentleman of the western world he had
shared in the fruits of his culture's power and must therefore share what
guilt that power incurred. Nor was this the end of his responsibility:
for if it was the accidents of power and position that made the difference
between exploiters and exploited, and not some mysterious specializa-
tion of each group's psyche, then it was as 'liuman" for the white man
to enslave and dispossess as it was "human" for the black and red to
slaughter on the basis of color alone; the savage who would put him
to the torch anon was no less his brother than was the trader who had
once enslaved that savage. In sum, the poet observed, for his secular
Original Sin, though he was to atone for it in person, he would exact
a kind of Vicarious Retribution; he had committed a grievous crime against
himself, and it was himself who soon would punish the malefactor!

Grasping the pair of insights was the labor of but as many seconds, and
though they moved him as had few moments in his spiritual autobiography,

[ 580 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

all he said to Bertrand and McEvoy was, "In any case, 'tis too late to
split the hairs of responsibility. Look yonder."

He indicated with his brows the direction of the hut from which McEvoy
had been lately escorted. The eyes of the assemblage had turned that way
as well, and their conversation dwindled to a murmur. The three kings
had issued forth to render judgment: as best Ebenezer could distinguish
through the mists, one was a strapping Negro, one an equally robust red
man,, and the third, also an Indian, an aged, decrepit fellow who moved
with a great deal of difficulty on the arms of his younger colleagues. All
three were dressed elaborately by comparison with their subjects: their
garments were fringed, tasseled, and colorfully worked with shell-beads;
their faces were striped and circled with puccoon; their necks hung with
bear's teeth and cowries; the Indians wore headdresses of beadwork and
turkey feathers, while the Negro's was wrought of two bull's horns mounted
in fur. The two stalwarts held each in his free hand a formidable bone-
tipped javelin; the ancient one bore in his right a sort of scepter or
ceremonial staff topped with the pelt of a muskrat, and in his left a flaming
and sputtering pitch-pine torch.

The pace made their approach more somber. McEvoy regarded them
wide-eyed over his shoulder; Bertrand began to make moan in rhythmical
expirations. Ebenezer blushed with fear; he pressed his lips fast, but the
rest of his features ticked and twitched.

Closest to the triumvirate was McEvoy: they confronted him sternly;
the Negro raised his spear and made some sort of pronouncement, which
his subjects received with an uncertain murmur, and then the younger
of the Indian chiefs apparently repeated it in his tongue, for his statement
met with a like response. Ebenezer remarked some displeasure in the old
chiefs face, and great satisfaction in the countenance of McEvoy's Negro
companion Bandy Lou, who stood nearby; doubtless the statement had
to do with the Irishman's acquittal. The party moved next to the bearded
Captain, who had fust begun to stir and roll his head. Again some sentence
was rendered in two languages with upraised spears: the old chiefs smile
and the assemblage's shouted approval made its meaning clear, and the
poet shuddered.

Next came Bertrand, who turned his head away and squinted shut his
eyes. The younger of the Indian kings regarded him coldly, the older with
malevolent pleasure as he nodded to something the Negro was leaning
to whisper in his ear. All eyes were on the great black king, who in both
of the previous instances had passed sentence first; he ended his colloquy

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 581 ]

with the old man, lifted his javelin, and began his pronouncement even
as he raised his eyes to the prisoner's face.

But he stopped in mid-sentence and rushed forward to turn Bertrand's
face towards his own. Ebenezer's muscles tautened: since the Negro had
retained his spear but let go the old chiefs arm most uncourteously, the
poet rather expected to see Bertrand run through on the instant for the
crime of averting his head. Nor were his fears allayed when the Negro
gave a cry, snatched a bone knife from the belt of a nearby lieutenant,
and leaped toward the valet with the weapon held back for striking. His
fellow chiefs frowned; the nearer spectators drew back in alarm, and their
consternation mounted when, instead of ending the prisoner's life or dis-
membering him where he hung, the black king sliced furiously at the thongs
and fetters, kicked away the knee-high faggots, and flung himself prostrate
at the reeling prisoner's feet!

"Master Eben!" the valet bawled, drawing back against the post. The
old Indian chief barked shrilly, and the younger made what appeared to
be a sharp query, to which the Negro king replied in the Indian tongue,
face down, his voice heavy with emotion. The common had gone silent
as a church; awe showed in every face. The Indian king frowned more
severely than ever, summoned lieutenants to support his ancient colleague,
and strode as quickly as dignity permitted, not toward Bertrand but toward
the much-distraught prisoner who had yet to be confronted with his judg-
ment.

"Quassapelagh!"

The chief had advanced only a pace or two when Ebenezer recognized
—under the war paint, regali^ and newly regained good health— the ailing
fugitive of the cliffside cave: the deposed "Anacostin King" from whom
he had first learned that he was in Maryland, and to whom, despite Ber-
trand's protests, he had given as attendant . . .

"Dear Christ, now I see't!" he cried. "Bertrand! 'Tis Quassapelagh and
Drakepecker! Thou'rt rescued, Bertrand! Yon Dick Parker of McEvoy's is
your Drakepecker, and here's Quassapelagh come to save me!"

Indeed, when the Indian had looked well into Ebenezer's face, his eyes
lost their sternness, his mouth showed a trace of a smile, and at his com-
mand two guards stepped forward to release the poet's bonds.

"I set you free and beg your pardon," Quassapelagh said gravely. "Tis
well no harm was done the man who saved Quassapelagh's life."

Like Bertrand, Ebenezer was too overwhelmed to speak, once he was
freed from the terrible stake. His eyes welled with tears; he reeled and

[ 582 3 THE SOT-WEEP FACTOR

laughed hoarsely, shook his head, and looked to McEvoy as though in dis-
belief. The old chief, meanwhile, had not ceased to rail and curse: he
apparently understood no more of these marvels than did his subjects or
the other two prisoners, and was growing more wrathful by the moment.
Quassapelagh bowed slightly to Ebenezer, suggested that the poet remain
where he was for a few minutes more, and returned to pacify the old man.
The Negro king too, whom to everyone's horror Bertrand had embraced
most fervently upon realizing his identity, now disengaged himself and
joined the council. It was clear, from the tenor of their discourse, that
the old chief objected strenuously to freeing the prisoners; after a few mo-
ments Quassapelagh summoned Ebenezer, snatched his left hand, and mut-
tered, "The ring . . . You have the ring Quassapelagh gave you?"

The poet fished out from his pocket the fishbone ring, thanking Prov-
idence and Joan Toast that he had exchanged his silver seal for it after all.
Quassapelagh first showed the ring to the old chief and then, with some
half-defiant proclamation, lifted it high for the crowd to view. At the same
time Dick Parker, or Drakepecker, issued orders to Bandy Lou, who stood
beaming nearby, and all the prisoners except the Captain were hustled back
to the jail-hut before the old man had a chance to launch fresh protests.

'Tfaith!" Ebenezer laughed tensely. 'What a palace this hut seems now!"

On the common, where the mists had been brightened but not dispelled
by the rising sun, there was considerable commotion. Peering between the
legs of the guards outside their hut, Ebenezer saw the three leaders move
off again towards the building from which they had appeared; the old one,
clearly by no means pacified, was now supported by two Indians with
headgear similar to his own.

" Tis a Holy Writ miracle!" cried McEvoy, his eyes and mouth still
wincing with astonishment. "Nay, a miracle atop a miracle! How is't Dick
Parker is alive, and knows ye? Many, he fell on his belly as if your man
here was a god!"

"I was no less, thank ye," Bertrand said proudly, "and a better parish-
ioner no proper god could wish for! Hath he not risen to the top of the
heap, though! Did ye see him stand up for me to the old tyrant, as bold
as ye please?"

For McEvoy's benefit Ebenezer recounted the story of their walking
the pirates' plank, mistaking Maryland for an ocean isle, freeing Drake-
pecker from his bonds, discovering the fugitive Quassapelagh ill of a fes-
tered wound, and leaving the worshipful black man to minister to his
needs.

THE SOT-WEEP FACTOR [ 583 ]

"Twas for that he gave us the fishbone rings, albeit he said naught
of their meaning. What doth it signify, and how came a poor slave like
Drakepecker to be a king?"

McEvoy could throw no light on the meaning of the ring. "As for the
wight ye call Drakepecker, though, he is the same I spoke of before, that
I called Dick Parker. The boat that spirited me off from London took
him aboard in Carolina along with Bandy Lou and two score other slaves,
to sell in Maryland. They had all been snatched from some African town
not long before, and this Dick Parker was their king. The first mate chained
him and Bandy Lou in the hold for the same reason I was there/' The
Irishman grinned. "Dick Parker was always after raising a mutiny; the mate
was all for murthering him, but the captain knew he was a king and thought
if they could flog his spirit out, they could use him to keep the others from
making trouble. Twice a day they laid the lash on him, and he'd spit on
the sailor that tied him to the foremast and spit on the sailor that untied
him after. O'er and again I advised him, through Bandy Lou, to put by
his pride till he was sold and settled, and then escape and help the others;
he'd reply my counsel was the best for Bandy Lou and the other lieutenants,
but a king that was bought and sold was no king at all. If I declared no
dead king ever won a battle, he'd reply 'twas not in the lion to play the
jackal's part, and a dead king could still be a living example to his subjects.
He gave orders to Bandy Lou to do as I advised, and the next time they
fetched him up for flogging he spat on the mate himself. The captain
got Bandy Lou to tell him 'twas do as they would of him or drown, but
Dick Parker only spat at the captain as well; 'twas then they heaved him
o'er the side, bound hand and foot. Half the slaves were sold in Anne
Arundel Town next day, and the other half, along with us redemptioners,
in Oxford the day after that. How the wight managed to stay afloat Til
never know."

Ebenezer shook his head, remembering the stripes on the Negro's back
when they had discovered him on the beach. "So now he's king of the
runaway slaves^ and Quassapelagh king of the disaffected salvage Indians!
Heav'n help the English if they carry out their plan!"

"Devil take 'em, I say," McEvoy replied, "they have it coming." Both
he and Bertrand declared their intention to beg or steal passage back to
London as soon as possible, so that they might wish the rebels success with-
out wishing their own ill fortune. Ebenezer had not lost sight of his late
reflections at the stake; yet though he could sympathize with the plight
of the slaves and Indians and affirm the guilt even of white men who,

[ 584 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

like himself, had condoned that, plight merely in effect, by not protesting
it, he could by no means relish the idea of a wholesale massacre. On
the contrary, with his two near-executions to dulcify it, life tasted uncom-
monly sweet to the poet fust then, and he shuddered at the thought of
anyone's being deprived of it.

"We must find a way to save the Captain/' he declared. "He hath
less reason to be here than any of us, since 'twas neither search nor flight
that brought him." And he added, though he quite understood the limita-
tions of the statement, "If he dies, 'tis I must answer for't, inasmuch as
I hired him to ferry me to Maiden and paid him extra to leave at once
despite the weather and the time of day."

Both McEvoy and the valet protested this assumption of responsibility,
and McEvoy asserted further that though he had every wish for the old
man's safety, he was not prepared to sacrifice or even jeopardize his own
for it. "What's the virtue of trading our skins for his? Tis three lives for
one, and the one no nobler nor more important than any of the three/'
But the poet was by no means comforted by this reasoning, though he
had at hand no ready refutation.

"In any case," Bertrand offered, " 'ids too early for tears and cheers alike.
If Drakepecker hath his way we may all go free; if not, we may bum yet/'
His companions agreed, and they fell to speculating on the office and
influence of the ancient Indian who had been so loath to see them freed.
McEvoy called in the African named—as best their English speech sounds
could approximate—Bandy Lou, who replied to their several questions with
a huge, invincible smile whether his information was cheering, distressing,
or indifferent

Who was the old Indian king?

"He is the Tayac Chicamec, King of the Ahatchwhoops, and for four*
and-eighty summers an enemy to Englishmen. This is his island/'

Upon Ebenezer's inquiring about the division of power between the
titfee kings and the jurisdiction of each, Bandy Lou replied that Quassape-
lagh was a sort of commander-in-chief of all the disaffected Indians on the
western side of the Chesapeake, Chicamec held the same post on the East-
ern Shore, and Drepacca was the king of the runaway Negtoes. He went on
to assert very candidly that, while in theory the three were invested with
equal authority, it was Quassapelagh, the Anacostin King, who wielded
the greatest actual power, not only because the chieftains under him-
Ochotoinaquath of the Piscataways, Tom Calvert of the Chopticoes, and
Maquantah of the Mattawomans, for example-were more numerous, in-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 585 ]

fluential, and belligerent than were Chicamec's lieutenants, but also because
some of the latter-such as the son of the Emperor Umacokasimmon,
Asquas, whom Governor Copley had deposed as leader of the warlike Nan-
ticokes in favor of the complaisant Panquas and Annoughtough-were
more disposed to follow the younger, more vigorous Quassapelagh than
their aged Commander-in-chief. Moreover, the lion's share of potential
power, according to Bandy Lou, was held by Drepacca, for although there
were many more belligerent Indians than runaway Negroes, Quassapelagh's
authority was limited necessarily to the Province, and the allegiance of
his subjects, except for a small group of Piscataways, was directed primarily
to the several tribal chieftains and only indirectly to the Anacostin King
himself. Drepacca, on the other hand, had in a very short time become the
direct and undisputed leader of every fugitive African in the area and the in-
spiration of thousands still enslaved; furthermore, he had not the obstacles
of tribal geography and rival leadership to contend with: Negroes from
various African tribes were distributed indiscriminately among the provinces
by the slave market, and Drepacca, so far as anyone knew, was the only
royalty among them. In consequence of these facts, together with his quick
intelligence (he had learned the Piscataway dialect in three weeks from
Quassapelagh), his formidable personal appearance, and the advantage his
being neither white nor Indian gave him in negotiations with the French
and the northern nations, the sphere of Drepacca's influence grew daily
more extensive and might well encompass soon the entire Negro popula-
tion of America, whose number increased with every ship from the western
coast of Africa. One guessed, from the unbounded pride in his voice, that
Bandy Lou had already crowned his master Emperor of America. Ebenezer
shivered.

"More power to him," McEvoy said grimly. "If Dick Parkefs as strong
as all that, we've naught to fear from this Tayac Chuckaluck, or Chicken-
neck, or whatever. Wouldn't ye say so, Bandy Lou? Tis a brace of big
men against one little one."

Ah, now, the smiling Negro cautioned, things were not so altogether
simple as that, for while Chicamec held in truth a great deal less power,
actual or potential, than did either of his confederates, he was known to
Indians all up and down the provinces as an ancient foe of the white
man: he was virtually a legend among them; his name for three decades
had been synonymous with uncompromising resistance; and in addition
his little town of Ahatchwhoops was the hardest core of armed and organ-
ized English-haters in the Province^ and his island the safest and most

[ 586 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

nearly central location anyone knew of for a general headquarters. In short,
though but a figurehead, he was an extremely valuable one, and his col-
leagues deferred to him in all but the most important matters of policy-
the more readily since nine-tenths of the rebels' power was in their hands.

"Ffaithr cried Bertrand. "D'ye mean they might let him burn us after
all?"

"I do hope not/' said Bandy Lou agreeably. One of the other guards
called to him in dialect from outside, and he added, his smile unchanged
in magnitude or character: "Come now, and we shall learn."

7: HOW THE AHATCHWHOOPS DOE CHOOSE A KING
OVER THEM

FOR THE SECOND TIME THAT MORNING, THEN, EBENEZER, BERTRAND,

and McEvoy were escorted out onto the misty common. Though there was
light aplenty now, the sky remained overcast, and the foggy salt marsh
scarcely less gloomy than before. The cooking fires were out, the women
occupied with various housekeeping chores, and most of the men, presum-
ably, out on the marshes and waterways replenishing the supply of seafood
and wildfowl. A few dozen, whom Ebenezer took to be minor chieftains
and their lieutenants, still sat with their pipes about the larger council-fires,
engaged in serious debate; it was not difficult to guess, from the silent,
stony countenances that followed the prisoners' march across the common,
what had been the subject of their discussion.

Less apprehensive than before, the poet was able to look about him
with greater interest and detachment. He remarked, for example, that the
village was considerably larger than he had previously estimated: the
muskrat-house dwellings numbered more nearly three hundred than one
hundred, and work-parties of Negroes were constructing new ones, no doubt
for their own accommodation, around the whole periphery of the town.
Indeed, the supply of high ground was virtually exhausted, and the builders
were obliged to resort to various expedients; at one edge of the village
was a flat-topped mountain of oystershells— piled up, one gathered, by gen-
erations of Ahatchwhoops in the days before building lots were at such
a premium— which the Negroes were busily shoveling into the adjacent
both to create nevy dry ground and to clear the old; in other places

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 587 ]

the huts were being erected on low pilings in the marsh itself, a curious
combining of African and Indian architectures. Again, the poet observed
for the first time the disproportion of sexes in the population: even allowing
for the exaggeration of fear, he judged that nearly a thousand men had
thronged the common that morning— seven hundred at the very least, of
whom surely no more than two hundred had arrived with Quassapelagh
and Drepacca-— whereas the women, unless great numbers of them had been
granted the unlikely privilege of sleeping late into the morning, could be
counted more easily in dozens than in hundreds. Yet there seemed to be
no shortage of children; indeed, the spaces between the huts fairly swarmed
with little savages, whose great number and wildly various pigmentation
suggested to Ebenezer not only polyandry but a cultural alliance in spheres
more intimate than either politics or architecture.

This time the party did not stop at the stakes, but proceeded directly to
the royal hut on the opposite side from the jail. To the old Captain, who
regarded them as sullenly from his stake as did the chieftains from their
councils, Ebenezer called, "Never fear, old man, we shan't betray you.
'Tis all of us or none."

"In a pig's arse," muttered Bertrand beside him, and McEvoy added
flatly, "Ye may stake your own fortunes where ye please, but not McEvoy's.
If he dies on my account Til mourn him sorely^ but if I die on his account
I'll hate his guts/* As for the Captain himself, either he did not hear the
poet's encouragement, or was too unhinged by fear to comprehend it, or
simply discounted it as so much empty talk, for his expression remained
unchanged.

At the entrance to the royal hut Bandy Lou said with his great smile,
"We stop here. You go there/' and pointed to the hide-flap doorway. The
prisoners hesitated, each reluctant to take the initiative, and then Ebenezer,
his lantern jaw clenched tight, pushed the flap aside and led them in.

Except for its size and the more numerous hides which served as rugs
and wall-hangings alike, Chicamec's palace was little different from his
jail. Along the rear wall stood a line of guards, spears in hand. A small
fire burned in a circle of rocks in the center of the floor; behind it, tight-
lipped and evil-eyed, Sat the wrinkled old king himself, flanked by his two
unsmiling confederates. The Englishmen faced them uneasily, uncertain
whether to sit or remain standing, bow or stand still, speak or be silent.
In the absence of Bandy Lou, Ebenezer looked to Quassapelagh for in-
structions, but it was Drepacca who addressed them, apparently having
added a fluency in English to the catalogue of his assets.

[ r88 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"It is the wish of Drepacca," he declared sternly, "that the four white
men go free; or that, if one must die, it be the old man; or that, if only
one may live, it be one of the two who saved Drepacca's life/'

McEvoy scowled; Ebenezer and Bertrand avoided each other's eyes.

"It is the wish of Quassapelagh," Drepacca resumed, "that the old man
and the red-haired singer die, and you twain be spared; or that, if only
one may live, it be the tall one who still wears the Ring of Brotherhood/'

"I say!" McEvoy protested; Bertrand's face fell. A guard lowered his
spear to the ready, and the Irishman said no more.

"It is the wish of Chicamec," continued the African king, "that every
man of white skin on the face of the earth be deprived of his privy member
and put to the spear. But he allows that the tall one is a brother of Quas-
sapelagh and must be spared/7 He looked at Bertrand, and though neither
his tone nor his expression lost its sternness, he said, "I regret that you
have lost Quassapelagh's ring, and that I once knelt to you as a god
instead of making you my brother in the manner of my people. But I have
told Chicamec that you and the tall one saved my life, and that who kills
you must kill Drepacca first. Chicamec has made no answer to this, and
so you will go free— mind you do not smile, or he will guess my words and
strike you dead at any cost/'

To McEvoy he said, "You are my friend and the friend of Banddu,
and I would not see you die. But the anger of Chicamec is great, and he
grants brotherhood only to those who have saved the life of one of us.
You must bid your friends farewell/'

"Nay, 'sheart!" McEvoy cried; the guard moved closer, and Chicamec's
eyes grew dark. "What I mean," McEvoy continued in a calmer voice, "if
thou'rt such a friend as ye claim, and have such a gang as Bandy Lou
says ye have behind ye, why is't ye let this bloody old flitch be judge and
jury? Turn us all loose, and be damned to him!"

Quassapelagh, whose frown had deepened at the Irishman's choice of
words, spoke up in reply. "Quassapelagh and Drepacca are strong, but our
strength is not on the island of Chicamec. If the Ahatchwhoops fight the
people of Drepacca, our cause will lose a mighty ally and a mighty king.
Chicamec will not make war to kill brothers of Drepacca and Quassapelagh,
but to kill any other white man, Chicamec will make war. You must die."

'Then so must I!" Ebenezer said suddenly. His brow furrowed and un-
terowed at a great rate, his hands twitched about, and his nose was a
thing alive. Quassapelagh and Drepacca turned to him with surprise; Ber-
trand and McEvoy with incredulity. "Either the four of us will go free,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 589 ]

or the four of us will die!" declared the poet. "It is my fault these men
are here, and I shan't permit myself to be saved without all three of them/'
He looked accusingly at Drepacca. "Perhaps Drepacca doth not defend
his own, but Eben Cooke doth, friends or no."

"I beg my brother to think again/7 Quassapelagh said, maintaining his
stern composure for Chicamec's benefit "If I must, I shall strike you sense-
less to spare your life."

But Ebenezer had apparently foreseen this possibility. "Not a bit oft,"
he replied at once, his voice exhilarated by the rashness of his move. "Not
a bit oft, dear Quassapelagh; the moment you say even one of us must
die I'll leap and throttle Chicamec yonder, and his bullies will spear me
like a pincushion. Nay, don't warn 'em off, or I'll spring this instant."

"F faith, Eben!" cried McEvoy. "Save yourself; there's naught else for't!"

"Our friend speaks wisely as well as generously," Drepacca added. "Do
not throw four lives away instead of two."

"Say no more on't!" Ebenezer ordered briskly. His face was flushed
and his voice uneven, and his heart pounded hot blood through his limbs.
"Will ye spare your brother's people or put him to the spear? Yea me
or nay me, and have done with'tl" He swayed on his feet, arms swinging
free, as if ready to make good his threat. Chicamec seemed to sense trouble;
his glance sent two guards a step closer with upraised spears. Drepacca and
Quassapelagh exchanged uncertain flickers of their eyes.

"What, no answer, brothers?" The poet's voice grew shrill. "Adieu, then,
Brother Quassapelagh! Good luck to you, and bad luck to your murtherous
schemes! Adieu, Brother Drepacca, adieu, adieu! Tis a pity you ne'er met
my friend Henry Burlingame: you twain would get on famously!"

He went so far as actually to cock his muscles for the leap across the
fire, and paused only because Chicamec caught up the name Henry Bur-
lingame and unleashed a torrent of interrogation at Quassapelagh, in which
the name was repeated several times.

"Wait, brother!" Quassapelagh called sharply, and attended the rest of
his elder colleague's excited query while Ebenezer, the moment of his
courage past?, reeled and sweated in his stance.

"The Tayac Chicamec believes you spoke a certain name just then, and
would have you speak it another time."

"A name? Aye, 'twas Henry Burlingame!" Ebenezer laughed like one
deranged and leaned over toward the old king, on whose face was the
piercing, great-eyed frown of an osprey or fishhawk. "Henry Burlingpme!"
he shouted again, and tears dropped down his cheeks. "You've heard of

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

him, have you, murtherer? Or is it thou'rt Burlingame in disguise, and
here's another of thy famous pranks?" Hysteria brought him to the edge
of a swoon; his jaw slacked open, and he was obliged to sit heavily on
the ground before he fell.

Another sharp query from Chicamec.

"Who is this Henry Burlingame?" translated the Anacostm King. "A
friend of yours?"

Ebenezer nodded affirmatively, unable to speak.

"One of these here?" Quassapelagh asked. "No? In the white man's towns,
then?"

The affirmative brought more excited Indian-talk from old Chicamec,
in reply to which, when it had been translated for his benefit, Ebenezer ex-
plained that Burlingame was his former teacher, a man of some forty sum-
mers by his own best guess, made in ignorance of his actual birth date^
birthplace, and parentage.

One last inquiry Chicamec made, without recourse to language: his
whole frame shaking with consternation, he fetched a charred stick out of
the fire, drew with it upon a clean deerhide mat the symbol III, and raised
his terrible questioning stare to the poet again.

"Ay, that's the one," Ebenezer sighed, too weary in spirit to share the
troubled surprise of the others. "Henry Burlingame the Third." And then,
"I say, Quassapelagh, how is't he knows my Henry?" For it had only just
occurred to him that in all his tutor's years of adventure and intrigue, it
had been Burlingame's policy never to employ the name he was raised
by. The question was duly translated, but instead of answering directly,
the ancient Indian— the malevolence of whose countenance was supplanted
altogether by fierce astonishment— directed two guards to fetch a carved
and decorated chest from one end of the hut and place it directly before
the bewildered poet.

"The Tayac Chicamec bids you open the chest," said Drepacca.

Ebenezer did so, not knowing what new marvels he would find, and
was surprised to see nothing evidently breathtaking among the contents,
which so far as he could discern without rummaging about, tonsisted of
a number of black garments (whose obviously English manufacture led
him to observe that the little chest itself, beneath its Indian decoration,
was the sort used by seamen and travelers, not by savages), four corked
glass bottles of what seemed to be nothing but water, and on top of all
what looked like an old octavo notebook, bound in stained and battered
calf.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 59* ]

Chicamec spoke through the Anacostin King.

"There is a- — " Quassapelagh looked to Drepacca for assistance with
the translation.

"Boo&," the African said. "A book, there on the top/*

"Book," Quassapelagh repeated. "Chicamec bids my foolhardy brother
open the book and read its signs." And he added in the same translator's
tone, "It is the hope of Quassapelagh that my brother will read some
charm therein to cure his madness."

The poet picked up the volume as directed, whereupon the line of guards
behind Chicamec fell as one man to their knees, as though before some
holy relic. But Ebenezer found it to be in fact a species of English manu-
script-book, penned in the regular calligraphy of a gentleman, but with
ink too crusty and crude to be European. It bore on the front page the
unassuming title How the Ahatchwhoops Doe Choose a King Over Them
and commenced with what appeared on quick scanning to be a description
of the Dorchester marshes, perhaps the same island on which the tribe
now lived.

" Tis most intriguing, I concede," the poet said impatiently to Quassape-
lagh "but i'faith, this is no time . . . i'Christ, now . . ." He interrupted
himself to. reread, incredulously, the opening line— Being then our armes
bownd, and led like kine to the Salvage towne, some miles inland, I had
leisure to remark the cauntrie-side, through wch we traveled— and em-
barrassment, apprehension, and all gave way to the shock of recognition.

"John Smith's Secret Histonef9 he exclaimed. "'Sheart, then 'twas no
coincidence . . ." He was thinking of the Straits of Limbo, but his eyes
had moved already to the next passages of the Hiistorie; his jaw dropped
lower, and his sentence was destined never to be completed, for the sub-
stance of the manuscript, and more especially of the Tayac Chicamec's
tale that followed after, were unquestionably as amazing as anything in
Ebenezer's by no means uneventful life.

For the benefit of his mystified companions he read aloud as follows:

"It doth in sooth transcend the power of my. pen, or of my fande, to relate the
aspect of this place, so forsaken & desolate & ill-appearing withal; a sink-hole it
is, all marshie and gone to swamp^ Water standeth hereabouts in lakes & pooks,
forsooth there is more water then drie land, but most of the grownd is a mixture
of the twain, for that the tyde doth rise & fdl, covering & discovering grand
ftatts of mud thereby, and Isles bearing naught but greene reedes & pine-scrubb.
When that the tyde runneth out, smdtte pooles remaineth everiewhere, the w°*
do straightway sower & engender in there slyme more meskitoes, then there are
beades in a nunnerie, and each meskitoe hungrie as a priest. Add thereto, the

[ 592 I THE SOT-WEED FACTOK

entire countrie is flatt, and most belowe the level of the sea, so that the eye doth
see this drearie land-scape endlesslie on everie hand; the aire is wett & noisome
to the lights; the grownd giveth 'way beneathe the foot; and the 'water is too
fowle & brynie to drink. It is forsooth Earths uglie fundament., a place not fftt
for any English man, and I here venture, no matter how that the countrie neare
to hand, such as our owne Virginia, doth prosper in yeers to come, yet mil
no person but a Salvage ever inhabit this place through w°h we march' d, except
he be a bloudie fook, or other manner of ass.

"As for those same Salvages, that had us prisoner (thanks to the idiocie of
my Nemesis & rivdl L* EurUngame, that fatt clott-pott, as I have earlier dis-
cryb'd) , they -were a fitt reflection of there countrie, being more smalle in stature
& meane in appearance, then those others we had incounter*d . . . ."

Ebenezer looked up uncertainly from his reading, but the faces of
Quassapelagh and Drepacca showed no reaction to the words.

"Moreover" he read on, uthey seem'd less wont to speake, for that, upon my
enquiring of them, What nation were they? my captor hard by responded mere-
lie, Ahatchwhoop. W°* signifyeth, in the tongue of Powhatans people, that
foule aire, that riseth on a mans stomacke, after he hath eate a surfitt of food,
andlc* not determine, whether my Salvage designed to answer my querie, or
meant thereby an insult, or other like barbaritie; he w* saye no more. None the
less I was pleas' d, that they spoke a tongue resembling Powhatans, for that were I
able to converse with them, so much greater was our chance of slipping there
halter. For dh there silence, they did use us civillie, and harm'd not any of
our companie, while that we march'd. I reflected, that did they meane to kill
us, they had done so lightlie upon the shoar whereon we were ambuscado'd,
but they did not Verilie, they cd be sparing of our lives, onelie to take them
anon. But to dye on the morrowe, is better by a daye then to dye now, and
therefor I did breathe easier, while keeping still dert for a meanes of escaping
in\urie at there hands.

"At length we arriv'd at there town, the w°* was the rudest I had yet seene,
being little save a dozen hovells of sticks & mudd, thrown up on a patch of
dne grownd, that rose a hand or two from the swamp. At our approach, eight or
tenne more Salvages issu'd from the hutts, agd and feeble men in the mayn,
<*nd with them the women of the trybe, about 15 in number, and uglie as the
Devill Also, a host of scurvie doggs, that snapp'd & bitt at us from everie quar-
ter. ^

, "One great fatt Salvage there was, who coming from a hutt, did greet the
leader of those that led us thither, with a long harangue, the summe whereof, as
L£l«s™p #, was, that he was no whitt pleas' d at our being fetch* d to the towne.
Whereto the leader of our captors (a smalle Salvage, but lowd of mawth)
reply' d, that the speaker was not yet Werowance, w°* is to say, King, and ought
therefore to hold his peece untiU that the contest was done. That he had captur'd
the white-skinn'd men, our selves, whom he took to be Susquehannocks, to
m the contest, the Susquehannocks being greate workers of wonders, and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 593 1

famous warriors. Now, I knewe not what was the contest thus spoken of, nor
who was the fatt Salvage, nor yet the smalle one our c'aptor. But I had heard
telle, from King Hicktopeake, brother of Debedeavon the Laughing King of
Accomack, of those same Susquehannocks, to witt: that they were a great nation
far to the North, neare to the head of that vast Bay* whereon we sayl'd. That
they were much fear'd by the other Salvages, as warriors & feerce hunters. It
seem'd to me not a some thing, then, to be mistaken for a Susquehannock by
our captors, and so did not trouble my selfe to undeceive them.

"More argument ensuyd, betwixt the Salvages, they being each readie to give
commands to the other, and each loath to obey any, so that I wonder1 d, Where
was there King? For it seem'd to me, these heathen had either two Kings, or
none at all Just then, a Salvage wench did appeare, from out a hutt, and bearing
a vessell of water upon her head, did came it across to another hutt hard by.
She was, I sweare, the comliest Salvage ever I saw, slight of stature, and prettie
of face & forme, and being uncloth'd above the waist, her bubbs did lift most
fetchinglie what tyme she rated her armes to steadie the vessell At her appear-
ance, the two Salvages gave over there debate, and gaz'd after, as did my selfe
& all my partie, for that she was of such surpassing beautie. Directlie she was
gone, they fell againe to quarrelling, over where we s™ be lodg'd, and under what
guard, and w* have leapt upon each other, had I not interfear'd, and speaking in
Powhatans tongue, declared my selfe C*** J™ Smith of Virginia, and ojfer'd
them, that we returne to our barge, there being no handle place for us to sleep,
and make our waye in peece as best we might. We had no wishe, said 1, to im-
pose upon there hospitallitie, or trouble them in the matter of bedd & board.
This I spoke in jest, knowing full weE, we were where we were not by there in-
vitation, but as haplesse prisoners. The Salvages were amaz'd, that I spoke a
tongue w^ they cd grasp, and I, in turn, was much surpriz'd, when that the fatt
Salvage, so far from shewing displeasure at my proposall, took it up on the
instant, and w* have us begone. But the other wd have none of it, we must needs
staye for the contest on the morrowe. More dispute follow' d, and at last we were
put all in a hutt, with scarce room to lie flatt, and the smalte Salvage him selfe,
with divers of his troup, sat guard.

"My companie, understanding naught of all this discourse, were greatiie out
of sorts, and grows' d & compleyn'd much, for that they knewe not what wd
be our fate, or whether we $*"* live or dye. Add to w0*, we had been taken in the
morning, and it was then twylight, but naught had we been given to eate, nor
had any of the Salvages eat food, all the daye. Methought this was passing queere,
for that the meanest of gaolers is seldom that crueU, that he will not give his
charges some thing wherewith to staye there grumbling gutts. Despite w*h, jf
was little troubl'd in my owne mind, inasmuch as from what I had learnt, in
converse with our captors, our straits were at worst uncertain. Our keepers seem'd
scarce to know them selves what to doe with us, and there confusion 1 mark'd
as a good signe, together with the faction & dispute vP* I had witnessed. For
where faction is amongst the enemie, the battle is halfe won. Therefore I made
my men a little speach, intreating them to be of good heart, and comport them
selves as men. Big my intreaties were in vaine, they wish'd them selves back in

[ 594 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Jamestowne, or better in London, and curs' d the voiage that had brought them
hither. Burlingame, as I had foreseen, 'was lowdest in his compleynts, for all it
was he, in my estimation, that by his cowardice had brought us to this passe. I
had no love for him, that had done dl in his power to thwart me & my explora-
tions, and stir up unrest against me in Jamestowne. I heartilie wish'd him in
London, or at the bottom of the Baye, and told him as much. He onelie glar'd
at me, and spoke no more, but I guess9 d it was in his mind, shd I taunt him
farther, to tell the companie some scurvie lie, about Pocahontas & my selfe,
as he had oft threaten' d, and so I left him done. Yet I did reflect, that such a
state cd not persist, but must be remedy9 d soon, for that faction doth lead stitt
to mutinie, and without my guidance, I was certain dl wd perish at the hands of
the Sdvages, in there follie & ignorance, ere they regayn'd Jamestowne by them

"Greatlie tyr*d from the dayes adventures, and weak for want of food, they
all were soon asleep, maugre there feares & compleynts, and left to my selfe, I
undertook to ingage our guard> the smdle lowd Sdvage, in conversation, pur-
posing to learn more of our fate, and peradventure to gaym his favour, or to
promote the faction I had observed.

"This tyme my luck was better than theretofore; whether by reason that onelie
the twain of us were awake, or that he sought to allie me to his cause, the Sdvage
spake readilie & cordiallie in answer to my queries. I ask'd him, What was his
name? to wc* he reply' d, that it was Wepenter, woh is to say, a cookold, and he was
so cdPd, for his wyfe being taken from him to the bedd of the old Werowance,
or King. On farther questioning him, I learn9 d that this same King, cdled
Kekataughtassapooekskunoughmass (w°* is to say, Ninetie Fish), had latelie
dyjd, and I guess' d it was this same Wepenter, that in jedousie did murther him.
The towne then left without a King, and the old King having no heirs save his
single concubyne, the Sdvages must needs choose a new Werowance from there
number, and this they designed to doe on the morrowe, by a singular means.
"Att the Ahatchwhoops (that being the name of there trybe, and signifying,
a belch of gass) are exceeding smdle in stature, and for that reason doe hugelie
envie men of large size, and heavie. They believe, that the more a man can eat,
the bigger he will become, and the heavier there King, the more secure will be
there towne, against its enemies. Therefore, whenever that a King doth dye
with no mde heirs, dl the Ahatchwhoops doe assemble for a feast, and him who
doth prove the grandest glutton thereat, they doe cdl King over them, and be- .
stowe upon him a new name, signifying the atchievement whereby he gaytn'd
the throne. Thus was the old Werowance cdled Kekataughtassapooekskunough-
mass, for that he did eate ninetie fish on the daye he became there King. And
thus, I guesse, the folk were ftlie cdl'd, Ahatchwhoops, for dl the rise of bellie-
gass, that must attend the feasting.

Such was there curious custom, and when I had learnt it, my owne plight, and
that of my companie, grewe somewhat more cleare, dbeit I was not certain yet,
Why we were held prisoner? But with more speach, I soon learn' d, that there
were in the towne two men, who were desirous of the throne. Of these one was
the King's assassin, even that same Wepenter, with whom spoke, and he

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 595 ]

wish'd to be King, if onelie to regayn to him selfe his wyfe, the old Kings con-
cubyne, that once gone into by the last King, c* then lie onelie with the next.
Wepenters rivdl -was that same fatt Salvage, that had erst harangu'd us, and he
was caird Attonceaumoughhowgh, or Ano^e-targett , for that he -was so fatt, and
-withal an easie marke to hitt. This Attonce too did lust after Wepenters wyfe,
that was calYd Pokatawertussan, orFyre-bedd, for the surpassing heate wherewith
she did disport in matters of love.

"Now were it a simple contest in gfuttonie, betwixt this Attonce & this
Wepenter, then Wepenter wd loose the daye perforce, for that he was but smdle,
and Attonce exceeding large of bellie & appetite. But any Salvage, it was there
custom, cd enter the lists by proxie, if witting, proxie he c* find, and s^ his
champion then win the field, they vfi share the throne & the favours of the
Queene, but the proxie wd have no power to command. Thus had they alter9 d
antient practice, to the end they cd believe that the fattest man maketh the best
King, and yet avoyd the consequences of there belief.

"It was by virtue of this custom, that Wepenter & his fettowes had lay'd hold
of us, that we being strange in appearance, and sayling such a curious vessell,
he took us for wonder-workers, and was desirous of choosing from our number
one to playe his proxie on the morrowe. He declard it was Attonces troup, that
had shot arrowes from the shoar to drive us off, what tyme milord Burlingame
had leagu'd the Gentlemen behind him, to force us ashoar in quest of bellie-
timber. Maugre my contention, that the look of the land was hostile. And
Wepenter had call'd us Susquehannocks, merely to frigfiten his rivall out of
appetyte.

"These & many other things I learn9 d from this Wepenter, who then read
me his conditions, on hearing I was Captain of the companie. To witt: that I
was to be his proxie at the approaching feast. That SM I best Attonce in the
matter of gluttonie, all my companions w* be freed, and we w* rule the towne
conjoyntlie, and share the bedd of Pokatawertussan. That if, on the contrarie, I
was beat by Attonce, then I & dl my companie must needs dye forthwith at
Attonces hands, for such was the custom amongst the Ahatchwhoops.

"I reply9 d, that I was honour'd by his choyce, but poynted out 1 was slight
of girth, and temperate of appetyte, not given to feats of gluttonie. Therefore,
if he wd have a proxie, I suggested he choose not me, but examine our companie,
and of there number choose the fattest & most gluttonous of aspect, for his
proxie. This Wepenter did on the instant, and regarding att my souldiers &
Gentlemen, while that they slept, stopt at length over Burlingame, even as I
had design' d, and seeing that greate mountcdne of dung, spread out & snoring
like unto a swine in the wallow, Wepenter did make me a sign, this was his
choyce. I commended his wisdome, and assur'd him, that with such a proxie,
his victorie was certain, and he w* have at Pokatawertussan on the morrow.
Thereupon we smoak'd severdll pypes of tobacco by the fyre, and talk'd through
the night of many an idle thing.

"When that I saw the dawn grow light without the hutt, I did wake Burlin-
game, ere the rest of the companie arose, and addressed him boastfullie in this
wise. That I had deflowr'd Pocahontas before his eyes, and had farther layn with

[ 596 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Hicktopedkes Queene, what tyme he had abandon9 d her for harlot. He then en-
quir'd, in a fearsome choler, Wherefore had he to heare these things again? to
wch I answer* d that even as I had out-done him in manlinesse on these occasions,
so was I about to doe againe, for that there was that morn to be a contest,
whereof the winner SM lie at his pleasure with a comelie Salvage wench, the dead
Kings concubyne. On hearing these tydings, Burlingame grewe much arows'd,
and with much cursing & gnashing of teeth, did vilifye me, and at length re-
sorted to his antient threat, even that shd I not stand aside this tyme, and lett
him futter the Salvage in my stead, he w* straightwaye noyse about, in James-
towne & the London C° my employer, the truth anent Pocahontas & Hickto-
peakes Queene. I did replye, that I car'd not a whitt for all his threats (albeit
in sooth things w* goe hard, did my enemies get wind of his faule stone). Be-
sides wc\ I declar'd I had no choyce in the businesse, for that the entyre com-
panie, and the Salvage troup as well, had perforce to enter the lists, it being the
wont of these Ahatchwhoops, thus to make a pryze of there comeliest lassies.
He enquired, What manner of contest was it? and upon my telling him, that he
won the mayd, who eat the hugest cfuantitie of food, he was entyrelie pleas'd,
and did sweare, he w* eat twice over what any Salvage c*, & thrice what
I or any of our companie might eate. That he was insatiable of appetyte, and
had eat no food for two daies, and hence was certain to win the faire mayd. I
did rejoyn, that tyme w* prove his boast, but for my selfe, all I car'd was that
some one of our companie be victor, and not the great fatt Salvage of yesterdaye,
for else we SM all be put to the speere. Moreover, that shd he win the test, and so
save all our lives, not onelie w* he enjoye the prettie peece with all my blessing,
but Iwdlet bye-gones be bye-gones, and never againe bragg of my conquests, or
his owne dificiende. Farther, that I w* arrange matters with Pocahontas, that he
s™ trye her favours, when once we return' d to Jamestowne.

"These words fell sweet on the eares of Burlingame. He did growe doublie
hott, for thinking of them. When I recall'd to him then, what was our fate SM
Attonce win the daye, he reply d, that he worry' d not a beane. That he c* eate
any Englishman or heathen under the table. And he smack' d his greate stomacke
with his hand, whereupon it set up such a clamour, one had guess'd att the feends
of Hell therein. These thing? we spoke in English, that Wepenter might not
heare & guesse my ruse.

"Somewhile after, our companie was awake, and the souldiers & Gentlemen
compleyning of there bellies, that they had naught to eate. The Salvages did
gather without the hutt, and a greate fyre built, and we were led outside by
Wepenter, and seated in a half-circle, he behind Burlingame. Across from us satt
down Attonce, all fatt and ugie he was, and with him a score of his cohorts, in
another half-circle upon the grownd. Came then from a hutt hard by,
Pokatawertussan, and sat down betwixt the half -circles, on a kind of rugg, to see
who ^ be her next bedd-fellowe. She was that same mayde, who on the day just
past had quieted all harangue, merelie by raysing her armes & walking bye. Half
cladd she was, and bedawb'd with puckoone paynt, after the manner of Salvage
wenches, and so surpassing faire & tight withal, I had neare wish'd my selfe
greate of gutt, to win her favours. At sight of her, Attonce let goe a mightie hol-
lowing, and Burlingame, tike the rest of us save onelie me, all naked, for that our

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 597 ]

shirts had mended our sayle in the storme, and our breeches flung to the fishes
after our siege of fluxes & grypes in Limbo Strait, he was so taken with her, that
he shook all over, and slaver1 d over his lipps & sundrie chinnes. He whisper' d to
me, not to tell the others what we were about, that they w* not contend with
him, and I agreed with a right good will, for that I desir'd no man save Burlin-
game to win.

"Attonce then commenc'd to slapp his bellie with his hands, to the end he
might arowse a grander lust for food, and seeing him, Burlingame did likewise,
untill the rumbling of there gutts did eckoe about the swamps like the thunder of
vukanoes. Next Attonce, sitting cross-legged, did bump his buttockes up & down
upon the earthe, farther to appetyze him selfe; Burlingame also, that he give his
foe no quarter, and the verie grownd shudder'd beneath there awful bummes.
Burlingame then blubber' d his lipps & snapt the joynt-bones of his fingers, and
Attonce likewise. Attonce op*d & shutt his jawes with greate rapiditie, and also
Burlingame. And thus they did goe on, through many a ceremonie, whetting
there hungers, whilst our companie sat as amaz'd, not knowing what they wit-
ness'd, and the Salvages clapt there hands & daunc'd about, and Pokatawertus-
san look'd all lustilie from one to the other.

"At length, from everie hutt in the towne, the women and old men brought
forth the sundrie dishes of the feast, that had been some daies preparing. To
each of us was given a platter of divers foods, and onelie one, wch shew'd, though
it was sufficient to fill us with comfort, that none of us were reckon' d as contend-
ers, save onelie Burlingame & Attonce, before whom they set dish after dish.
For houres thereafter, while that the rest watch'd in astonishment, the two
gluttons match' d dish for dish, and herewith is the summe of what they eat:

Of keskowghnoughmass, the yellowe-belly'd sunne-fish,
tenne apiece.

Of copatone, the sturgeon, one apiece.

Of pummahumpnoughmass, fry'd star-fish, three apiece.

Of pawpeconoughmass, pype-fishes, four apiece, dry'd.

Of boyPd froggs, divers apiece, assorted buttes,
greenes, trees, & spring peepers.

Of blowfish, two apiece, frizzl'd & blow'd.

Of terrapin, a tortoise, one apiece, stew'd.

Also oysters, crabbs, trowt, croakers, rock-fish, ftownders, clamms, maninose, &
such other sea-food as the greate Baye doth gve up.
They next did eate:

Of mallard, canvas-backe, & buffo-head ducks, morsels
& mix'd peeces in like amounts.

Of hooded mergansers, one apiece, on picks as is there wont

Of pypers, one apiece, dry'd & pouder'd.

Of cohimk, a taystie goose, half apiece.

Of snypes, one apiece, baggd.

Of black & white warblers, one apiece, throttTd.

Of rubie-throated humming-birds, two apiece, scalded,
pickVd, & intensify'd.

Of gross-beeks, one apiece, bitt'd & erack'd.

[ 598 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Of browne creepers, one apiece, hitt.

Of long-bill'd marsh wrenns, a bird, one apiece, grows? d
& disembowell'd.

Of catt birds, one apiece, dyc'd& fetch'd.

Of growse, a legg apiece, smother* d naturall.

Also divers eggp, and bitts & bytes of turkie and -what all. The fowles done, they
turned to meat, and eat:

Of marsh ratts, one apiece, fry'd.

Of raccoon, hdf a one apiece, grutted.

Of dogg, equdl portions, a sort of spaniett it was.

Of venison, one pryme apiece, dry'd.

Of beare-cubb, a rasher each, roasted.

Of catamount, a haunch & griskin apiece, spitted & turrid.

Of baits, two apiece, boyl'd, de gustibus & cet.

No rabbitts. While that they eat of these severdl meats, there were serv'd to them
vegetables, to the number of five: beanes, rockahominy (w<* is to say, parch7 d &
pouder'd mayze), eggplant (that the French call aubergine), wild ryce, & a
saLlet of greene reedes, that was calTd Attaskus. Also berries of divers sorts, but no
frutes, and the whole wash'd downe with glue-broth and greate draughts of
Sawwehonesuckhanna, wc7lr signifyeth, bloud-water, a mild spirits they distill out
in the swamp.

"The while this wondrous feast was being eat, Wepenter did pownd & stryke
Burlingame upon the backe & bettie, to settle his stomacke, and Attonces aides
did likewise him smite. After that each course was done, they did both ope there
mowths wide, and Wepenter thrust his finger downe Burlingames crawe, &
Attonce his owne likewise, or else have recourse to a syrup call'd hipocoacanah,
so that they did vomitt what was eat, and cleare the holds for more. The Salvages
did leap & daunce the while, and Pokatawertussan twist & wrythe for verie lust
upon the rugg, at two such manlie men.

When at last this Attonce did get him selfe to his redd berries, w0* was the
final dish, that the Salvages had prepaid, and he did put one in his mawe, and
drop out two therefrom, for want of room, his lieutenant smote him one last
greate blow upon the gutt, whereat Attonce did let ftie a tooling fart and dy'd
upon the instant where he sat. And was too stuff d, even to fall over. Then did the
Salvages on our side crie out, Ahatchwhoop, Ahatchwhoop, signifying, that
Attonce was disqualify' d from farther competition. But albeit he was dead, our
Burlingame was not yet victor, for that the twain had eat to a draw as far as to
there find berrie. It wanted onelie for Burlingame to take but a single swallow
more, and our lives were sav'd. We hollow1 d at him, we cry'd & intreated, but
Burlingame onelie sat still, his eyes rownd, his face greene, his cheeks blown out,
his mowth filTd with berries, and for all our exhortation, cd not eat another bite.
Here I leapt up from where I sat, and snatching the last boyl'd batt out of the
caldron, prfd open his jaws & thrust it in. Then held shutt his mowth, and de-
livering him a stout rapp on the head, did cause him to swallow it down.

So clearlie then was Burlingame the victor, that Wepenter sprang upon him,
and rubb'd his nose against Burlingames, and fetch'd him a loving pott upon the
bettie. Whereat Burlingame did heave up what he had eat, and so befowVd

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 599 ]

Wepenter therewith, the Salvage must needs hie him selfe to the mer-shoar &
wash. All the people then declared Burlingame Werawance, or King, but he -was
too ill & doltish to grasp there 'words.

"It being by this tyme nightfall, for that the feast had lasted att the daie,
Burlingame was carry9 d in state to the old Kings hutt, and there install' d, not
able to move, and Pokatawertussan follow' d after ; all a tremble. Wepenter mean-
while, did exact allegiance from those Ahatchwhoops, that had been with
Attonce, and bade them fetch awaye the dead mans carcase, the wcjl still sat, for
burialL I told my companie, that we were free men, and w* make sayle on the
morrow, at woh tydings they shew'd good humour, thougfi they grasp'd little of
what had pass'd.

"When that the sunne rose, we wak'd, and taking provisions a plentie, the gift
of Wepenter, made readie to return to our barge, and pick up the broken thread
of our journie. This Wepenter was in fine good spirits, and upon my asking,
Wherefore? he reply9 d, that neare midnight, while that he slept, Pokatawertussan
had come to his hutt, albeit she was by custom bound to lye the first night with
the proxie. I wonder' d thereat, and Burlingame joyning us at the last minute,
even as we left downe the path to the shoar, I askd him, Had Pokatawertussan
earn'd her name? Whereupon he curs9d me ardentlie, and said, That the last
boyUd Batt had so undone him, he knew not where he was the whole night long.
That he had not been able even to see any Salvage trollop, how much the less doe
a mans work upon her. He was surpassing wroth with me, for having thrust the
Batt upon him, and maugre my protestation, that I had spar'd the lott of us there-
bye, he vow'd afresh to tell his tatting tale on me, and write letters to the London
C°,&cet. . . . I responded, that I had made a pact with him, that SM he win, he
c* doe whatsoever he wd, and turning, led my companie downe the path. Burlin-
game follow9 d, in all innocence, till that, to his surprize, the Salvages lay'd hands
on him, and maugre his whoops and hollowings, bore him back to the Kings hutt,
to reign over them with Wepenter for ever.

"My souldiers and Gentlemen much alarm9 d thereat, I made them a. speach,
that they SM be of good hearte. That the Salvages had demanded Burlingame as
tribute for our libertie, and being so few & unarm' d, we had naugfit for it, but
deliver him up & go in peece, onelie bearing his memorie for ever in our heartes.
This counsell at length prevayl'd, albeit the companie shew'd great sadnesse,
more especiallie the Gentlemen thereof, and we wav'd to Wepenter as we went
downe to the barge. For the favour of Princes, even amongst the Salvages, is a
slipperie boone, lightlie granted, and as lightlie withdrawn, and we wished onelie
to retayne it, untill that we were safe againe in our barge, and awaye from his
scurvie, barbarous countrie. Whither (God wot) I shall never return, nor yet
(God grant) any other Englishman.

"And may tie smyte me dead here where I sit, in the sternsheets of our trustie
barge, if any word of these adventures passe my lipps, or those of my Companie
(the w°h I have this daye sworn to eternal silence), or ever appeare in my greate
General! Historic, for:

When one must needs Companions leave for dead,
Tis well the Tale thereof were left unread/'

8: THE FATE OF FATHER JOSEPH FITZMAURICE, S.J., IS
FURTHER ILLUMINATED, AND ITSELF ILLUMINES
MYSTERIES MORE TENEBROUS AND PREGNANT

WHEN EBENEZER LOOKED UP, STILL AGAPE, FROM THE COUPLET AT THE

foot of Captain John Smith's Secret Historic, Chicamec commanded him,
through Drepacca, to return the volume to the chest, and the guards, who
had knelt throughout the lengthy reading, rose to their feet and carried the
chest back to its corner. Both Bertrand and McEvoy were surprised to hear
the name Burlingame in the manuscript, but knowing nothing of the
current Henry Burlingame's past or the contents of the manuscripts relative
to this one-and having the sentence of death upon their heads— they were
more bewildered than astonished by the narrative. Ebenezer, on the other
hand, was fairly bursting with curiosity, but before he could formulate a
proper question, the old chief demanded to hear again the poet's description
of his former tutor.

"What is his aspect?" Quassapelagh translated. 'Tell of his skin and the
rest."

'Tfaith — " Ebenezer frowned in recollection. "His skin is not so fair
as McEvo/s, yonder, nor yet so dark as Bertrand's; 'tis near in hue to
my own, I'd venture. As for his faoe-i'Christ, he hath so many-let me
say only that in stature he is slighter than any of us, a quite short fellow,
in fact, but his want of height is the less apparent forasmuch as he hath
a deep chest and good shoulders, and his neck and limbs are stout. Ah,
yes, and his eyes-tbey are dark, and have at times the glitter of a serpent's "

Chicamec nodded with satisfaction to hear these things; his next ques-
tion caijsed the Anacostin King to narrow his eyes, and Drepacca to smile
the briefest of royal smiles.

"The Tayac Chicamec desires to know about your friend , . ." He
searched for words, and the old chief, as though to assist him, held tip
one of his little fingers grasped at the second joint. Quassapelagh went on
determinedly, "He wishes to know about that part "

"They call it the privy member," offered Drepacca.

Quassapelagh did not acknowledge the assistance but relied on it to make

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 6oi ]

his message clear. "Whether it is of that small size, nor ever is moved by
love to manly proportion?"

Ebenezer blushed and replied that, quite to the contrary, Burlingame
was to be censured more for excess than for defect of carnal resources;
that he was, in fact, the very quintessence of fleshly lust, a man the catalogue
of whose conquests surpassed all reasonable bounds in respect not only
of length, but as well of manner and object

The Tayac received this news without surprise or disappointment and
merely inquired more particularly whether Ebenezer himself had been pres-
ent at any of these deplorable activities.

"Of course not," the poet said, not a little annoyed, for he found the
whole inquiry as uncomfortable as it was distasteful.

But surely the brother of Quassapelagh had observed with his own eyes
the instrument of his teacher's lechery?

"I have not, nor do I wish to! What is the end of all these questions?"

Drepacca listened to his elder colleague and then declared to Ebenezer,
"This man of whom you speak is Henry Burlingame Three; the fat English-
man of the book"— he pointed toward the chest in the corner— "is Henry
Burlingame One, the father of the father of your friend/'

"In truth? 'Sheart, 'twas what Henry hoped for from the first, but ne'er
could prove!" He laughed ironically. "What joy it is, to gladden a friend's
heart with news like this! But when Henry was my friend I'd naught to
give him; now I have these wondrous tidings and no friend to give them

to, for " He was about to say that Burlingame had betrayed not only

him but the cause of justice; he checked himself upon reflecting that, to
say the least, he was no longer certain whether justice lay with Baltimore
or John Coode, assuming the real existence of those gentlemen, and
whether in fact it was Burlingame or Reality that had betrayed him, or the
reverse, or simply he who had betrayed himself in some deep wise. "The
truth oft is," he declared instead, and realized the truth of his proposition
a$ he articulated it, "my friend hath passed into realms of complexity be-
yond my compass, and I have lost him."

This sentiment proved incapable of translation, even by the knowledge-
able Drepacca, who first interpreted it to mean that Burlingame was dead.

"No matter"— the poet smiled— "I love him still and yearn to tell him
what I've found. But stay— we have the grandsire and grandson, it appears,
but what came between? And how is't Henry was found floating in yonder
Bay? Ask the Tayac Chicamec who was Burlingame Two, and what came
of him."

[602] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Drepacca had no need to relay the question, for at the words Burlingame
Two old Chicamec, who had been listening intently, grunted and nodded
his head.

"Henry Burlingame Two/' He pronounced the words clearly, with no
trace of Indian accent, and tapped his thumb against his shrunken chest.
"Henry Burlingame Two."

"You? Ah, nay!" But even as Ebenezer protested his incredulity, he saw
in the high cheekbones and bright reptilian eyes the ghost of a resem-
blance to his friend. "Ah, nay!" he cried again. "Say rather he is the son
of Andrew Cooke; tell me his name is Ebenezer, the Laureate of Maryland
—'twere as easy to believe! Nay, gentlemen: 'tis beyond the Bounds; out-
side the Pale!"

Be that as it may, Chicamec replied in effect, he was the father of
Henry Burlingame III, whom he himself had set afloat to drown. He went
on to tell a most surprising tale for which Quassapelagh, clearly his favorite,
provided a running translation, deferring with reluctance to Drepacca at the
more difficult passages:

"The Tayac Chicamec is a mighty foe of white men!" he began. "Woe
betide the white-skinned traveler whq sets foot on this island while even
one Ahatchwhoop dwells here! For the Ahatchwhoops will not be sold
into slavery like the people of Drepacca, nor traffick for English guns
and English spirits like the people of Annoughtough and Panquas, nor
yet flee their homes and hunting-places "

"Like the people of Quassapelagh," Drepacca obliged.

"Rather will they put to the torch every white man who stumbles into
their midst, and lead the great war-party that sjiall drive the English Devils
into the sea, or else die fighting here upon their island, under the white
man's guns!"

Here Ebenezer interrupted. "You must ask the Tayac Chicamec the rea-
son for his wrath, Quassapelagh: I judge from yonder journal-book that
his people have suffered small harm from the English these four-score
years. He hath not one tenth the grievance of Quassapelagh or Drepacca^
yet he shews ten times their spleen."

"My brother asks a barbed question/' said Quassapelagh with a smile.
"I shall put it to the Tayac Chicamec without the barbs/'

j He did so, and with the typical indirection of the savage, Chicamec
ordered the chest brought out again in lieu of immecjiate reply. This time
he took out the journal himself— the guards knelt down at once and lowered
their eyes— and held it grimly at arm's length.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 603 ]

'This is The Book of English Devils,7' he said through Quassapelagh.
"Its tale you know: how my godlike father, the Tayac Henry Burlingame
One, did best the great Attonceaumoughhough as champion for Wepenter,
and drove off the English Devils from our land."

"Nay, one moment " the poet protested, but thought better of it at

once. "I mean to say, he was in sooth a mighty man."

"He drove out the English Devils upon their ship," Chicamec resumed,
"and then pursued them himself along the shore, for it was his vow that
he would follow them to their next encampment and there destroy the
lot. He crossed to the northern mainland by canoe and ran all day along
the shore of the marshy Honga, up whose broad reaches sailed the unwary
Devils. And when these Devils put ashore to make their camp, then did
the Tayac Burlingame spring to kill them, with no weapon save his hands.
But Wepenter had mistrusted the courage and godlike prowess of the white-
skinned Werowance and had followed after with a war-party, and for this
sin the gods bound fast my father's limbs with invisible thongs, so that the
Devils slew Wepenter and divers others, and made good their escape before
my father could destroy them. But in their haste they left behind this book,
in which was writ the Tayac Burlingame's mighty deeds, and he preserved
it to remind all future ages of Ahatchwhoops that the English are the seed
of those same Devils, and must be slain on sight

"Now you must know that my heavenly father was a man of no common
parts in carnal matters; but as the storm-god stores his strength for many
moons and then in a night lays waste the countryside, so the Tayac Henry
Burlingame One had a™ "

"A member," Drepacca offered, for the second time that day.

"It was no greater than a puppy's, nor more useful, nor did he go into
the Queen Pokatawertussan for three full nights after the Feast. But on
the f ourth,, so say our legends, he summoned her to the bed, and performed
the Rites of the Holy Egg-plant, after which he got a child in her so mightily,
she ne'er left her bed again, and died in bringing me forth!

"For twenty-six summers thereafter," Chicamec's tale continued, "the
Ahatchwhoops lived in peace under my father's rule. Our fishermen brought
us stories of English Devils far to the south, and divers times we saw their
great white ships go up the Bay, yet never did they put ashore on our island
or the nearby mainland. And great was my father's wrath against them:
when my mother the Queen Pokatawertussan was in travail, he vowed to
her he'd slay their child ere its cord was cut, if it was born white. And he
named me Henry Burlingame Two, but called me by an Ahatchwhoop

[604] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

name, Chicamec. Every day he would read The Book of English Devils,
and farther inflame the Ahatchwhoops to murther any white man who
fell into their hands. In my twenty-sixth year he died, and with his last
breath told our people that the Tayac Chicamec would guard their town
against the English Devils, and he swore me to a mighty oath, that I would
slay any white-skinned man who came among us, even from the wombs
of my wife and concubines.

"Loud were the wails of the Ahatchwhoops upon his passing, and when
I became Werowance in his stead, I prayed for a sign of favor from the
gods. At once a terrible storm crashed all about us and blew hither a med-
icine-rnan from amongst the English Devils, all senseless and half drowned
—by which sign we knew the gods favored my reign and my cause. Lest
any of our number doubt he was a Devil and take him for a human like
ourselves, I held forth our sacred totem for him to reverence, and being
a Devil, he spat upon it. Thereupon we offered him the privileges of the
damned and burnt him next day in yonder court, as you all— save the
brother of Quassapelagh— shall burn/'

"Stay, prithee!" cried Ebenezer, whose mind had been wrestling with
dates and recollections. "Captain John Smith made his voyage in 1608,
and you murthered this English Devil in your twenty-sixth year: I say,
Quassapelagh, ask him whether that chest yonder did not belong to this
medicine-man he speaks of . . ."
The question was translated and answered affirmatively.
"Ffaith, then— one more question: hath the Tayac Chicamec any other
sons besides my friend Henry Burlingame?" He strove to recall the tales
he'd heard from the Jesuit Thomas Smith and from Mary Mungummory,
the Traveling Whore o' Dorset. "Hath he a son now dead called Charley
. . . Moccassin? Mackinack? Nay, not that . . . 'twas Mattassin, I believe."
At mention of this name Chicamec's face went hard, and his reply,
according to Quassapelagh, was, "The Tayac Chicamec hath no sons."

"No sons?" Ebenezer was sorely disappointed. "Ah well, no matter,
then; 'tis only a curious coincidence of events'."

"Quassapelagh's brother doth mistake us," Drepacca put in pleasantly.
"The Anacostin King hath Englished Chicamec's words, but not his mean-
ing." He turned to Ebenezer. "In truth the Tayac Chicamec hath sons,
but they both deserted him to live among the English, and he hath dis-
owned them. One was the man you mentioned, whose name I shan't re-
peat: he slew a family of English and was hanged."
"Then I'm right!" the poet exulted. "This medicine-man was a Jesuit

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [605]

missionary, and yonder are his soutanes and holy-water! And 'sbody-

His imagination leaped to new connections. "Doth it not follow that Bur-
lingame is half-brother to this murthering Mattassin?"

No one else in the hut, of course, was in a position to appreciate these
revelations, and so far from sharing Ebenezer's exhilaration, Bertrand and
McEvoy grew ever more morose; clearly they were impatient with the whole
affair that had distracted Ebenezer from the business of saving their lives
and regarded his academic curiosity and enthusiasm as evidence that he
had abandoned them.

The second mention of Charley Mattassin's name elicited strong rebuke
from Chicamec.

"Methinks you should be proud of him," Ebenezer ventured. "Tis true
his victims were Dutch and not English, but they were white-skinned in
any case/'

"Take care, Brother," warned Quassapelagh. "I shall tell the Tayac Chic-
amec that you apologize for calling Mattassin his son/'

This done, the old chief went on with his story, and for the first time
an emotion other than wrath and malevolence could be noticed in his
tone:

"For many summers the Tayac Chicamec had denied himself the joys
of a wife and sons/7 Quassapelagh translated. "His heavenly father Henry
Burlingame One had given him to know that his seed was mixed, and had
farther sworn him to destroy any white-skinned issue; therefore, to spare
himself the pain of putting a child of his own to the spear, he chose to
live and die without the solace of a family.

"Now it happened that the medicine-man English Devil had lain with
divers women of the Ahatchwhoops on the night before he died— as is the
privilege of a man condemned, except he be a prisoner of war like your-
self—and had got three of them with child. The issue of the third was a
daughter, more red than her father and more white than her mother, and
the Ahatchwhoops took the child and made to drown her in the Chesa-
peake; but the Tayac Chicamec stayed their hands, observing to them that
the skin of the girl-child was of the same hue as his own. He took her to his
empty hut and raised her as his daughter, and this was a mighty sin against
the gods, but the Tayac Chicamec knew it not

"Thus it was that the child of the Devil was reared as a princess amongst
the Ahatchwhoops, and grew more beautiful to behold with every circuit
of the seasons, so that all the young men of the town became her suitors
and applied to the Tayac Chicamec for her hand. But the evil spirits put

[ 606 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

a torch to the Tape's heart,, and albeit he was then in his forty-fourth sum-
mer, and she in her fifteenth, he was possessed with love for her and desired
her for his own. The fire mounted to his head, and caused him to be-
lieve that inasmuch as the blood of the Princess was mixed in the same
manner as his own, he could father sons upon her whose skins would have
the color of their parents'. To this end he sent away the suitors and re-
vealed to the Princess that albeit he had raised her as his own, she was
not in fact the daughter of his loins, and he meant to have her for his
Queen. Greatly did the girl protest, whether because she had some favorite
amongst the young men of the town or because she was wont to think
of the Tayac Chicamec as her father; but such is the power of the vengeful
gods, her tears were merely fuel for the Tayac's passion, and he who had
lived long years without a wife grew so "

Drepacca too had to reflect for a moment before he could supply an
English approximation. "Enthralled? Nay, not as a slave f . . To be help-
less, but not as one in shackles . . ."

"Driven?9' Ebenezer suggested quickly. "Exalted? Overmastered?" Chic-
amec's nostrils flared with impatience at the delay.

"He was driven with lust," Quassapelagh declared, nodding acknowledg-
ment to the poet "So much so, that he shook in every limb like a beast
in season. Now the Secret of the Sacred Egg-plant, whereby Queen
Pokatawertussan was destroyed, had perished with her heavenly spouse, but
the Tayae Chicamec had no need of it, being a man in all his parts. When
the maid sought to move his pity by kneeling at his feet, he could no
longer wait to make her his Queen. Nay, he climbed her then and there,
and in the night that followed filled her with his seedl"

Although Quassapelagh had remained impassive as he translated, Chic-
aniec's voice had grown excited; his breath was coming faster, and his
old eyes shone. Now he paused, and his face and tone grew stern again.

"In the morning, unknown to all, she was already with child, and the
Tayac made her his Queen. The evil spirit that had possessed him now
left his head at last, and all the while her belly grew he did not touch
her again, for shame, and trembled lest she bear a white-skinned boy for
him to slay. But strange and far-reaching is the vengeance of the gods!
She bore him a fine dark son, a very prince among Ahatchwhoops, a man-
child perfect in every wise save one, which the Tayac observed at once
the boy had . . "

"Inherited."

". . . had inherited from his grandsire Henry Burlingame One— tibe single

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 607 ]

defect of that lordly man; and it was clear, his grandsire's Secret of the
Holy Egg-plant being lost, this boy would ne'er be able to carry on the
royal line. For that reason he was not called Henry Burlingame Three,
but Mattassinemarough, which is to say, Man of Copper; and for this
reason as well, albeit the lust was gone out of him, the Tayac Chicamec
durst force his Queen a second time, and plied her with seed the night
through to get another son on her. And again he trembled lest she bring
forth a white child for him to slay, and did not go in to her the while her
belly rose beneath her coats. As before, the Queen was brought to bed
of a son, this one neither dark as the dark Ahatchwhoops nor white as
the English Devils, but the flawless golden image of its father, save for
one thing: like his brother Mattassin he had not the veriest shadow of that
which makes men men, and since none but God imparts to men the Mys-
teries of the Egg-plant, this boy could never in a hundred summers get
grandsons for the Tayac Chicamec. Thus he was not called Henry Bur-
lingame Three, but Cohunkowprets, which is to say, Bill-o'-the-Goose, for-
asmuch as his mother the Queen, on first beholding his want of manliness,
declared A goose hath pecked him; and farther, She -would that goose had
spared the son and dined upon the father.

"But the Tayac Chicamec waited for the Queen to gather her strength,
and a third time drove her with the seed that brings forth men; and until
the harvest he trembled like an aspen in the storm. But the third son
of his loins was neither dark like Mattassinemarough, nor yet golden like
Cohunkowprets, but white as an English sail from head to foot, and his
eyes not black but blue as the Chesapeake! He was his grandsire bom
again, e'en to that defect shared by his brothers, and albeit the gods might
have seen fit to impart to the boy the Secret of the Holy Egg-plant, as
they had imparted it to his divine grandsire, there was naught for it but
the Tayac Chicamec must fulfill his awful vow and slay the boy for an
English Devil ...

"Mark how the sinner pays thrice o'er for his sinf When the Tayac Chic-
amec declared to the town that the white-skinned child must die, the Queen
snatched up a spear, flung herself upon it, and perished rather than witness
the new babe's slaying or bear another child to take its place. But the
Tayac Chicamec fetched the white-skinned prince alone to the waterside
to drown him, and his heart was heavy in his breast. The Queen was dead,
that he thrice had ravished in vain, nor durst he get children on the con-
cubines who would share his bed thenceforth, but sow his murtherous seed
in the empty air. And at last he was not able to drown the child; instead

[608] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

he painted with red ochre on its chest the signs he had learnt from his
father and The Book of English Devils: HENRY BURLINGAME III;
then he laid the boy in the bottom of a canoe and sent him down the
mighty Chesapeake on the tide. And he prayed to the spirit of the Tayac
Henry Burlingame One to spare the child from drowning and impart to
him the Magic of the Sacred Egg-plant, that he might further the royal
bloodline — even if amongst the English Devils/'

"I'God!" Ebenezer marveled. " Tis the state the sea captain found him
in, and the very time and place!" Yet though he remembered Mary Mun-
gummory's tale of her singular love affair with Charley Mattassin— a tale
which not till now could he fully appreciate— and also certain startling as-
sertions of Henry's— for example, that he had never made actual "love" to
Anna— nonetheless he found this "certain defect" of Chicamec's offspring
roost difficult to reconcile with the staggering sexuality of his friend and
former tutor. There was much yet to be explained.
. "The Tayac Chicamec enquires of Quassapelagh's brother/' Drepacca
said, "whether the man you call Henry Burlingame Three hath many sons
in his house?"

Ebenezer was on tie verge of a negative reply, but he suddenly changed
his mind and said instead, "Henry Burlingame Three was still a young
man when he tutored me, but albeit I know where he dwells, I've not
seen him these several years. Yet I know him for a famous lover of women,
and 'tis quite likely he hath a tribe of sons and daughters." In fact there
had occurred to him the dim suggestion of a plan to save his companions
as well as himself; not so rash as before, he pondered and revised it as
Chicamec, evidently disappointed by the reply, concluded his narration
through the medium of Quassapelagh,

"In the years that followed, the Tayac Chicamec raised his other sons
to manhood, the dark-skinned Mattassin and the golden Cohunkowprets;
and for all their sore defect they grew strong and straight as two pine
trees of their country, bold as the bears who raid the hunter's camp, cunning
as the raccoons, tireless as the hawks of the air, and steadfast-steadfast as
the snapping-turtle, foe to waterfowl, that will lose his life ere he loose
his jaws, and e'en when his head is severed, bite on in death!"

The old chiefs voice had rung with pride until this final attribution,

which evidently gave him pain; such tenacity of purpose^ it seemed to

Ebenezer, he regarded as a most ambivalent trait Now the furrows of

his^face winced deeper, and he spoke more broodingjy.

"Who knows what deeds the gods regard as crimes," Quassapelagh trans-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [609]

lated, "until they take revenge? Was't so grave a sin to raise the daughter
of the English Devil in the Tayac's house and get sons upon her when
she came of age? Or was't a fresh sin that he vowed to slay his white-skinned
child, and drove the Queen to fall upon a spear? If either be sin, is not
the other its atonement? Or was his new crime that he spared the boy at
last, and he hath lived? One thing alone is given man to know: whatever
his sins, they must perforce be grievous, for terrible is the punishment he
suffers, and unending! 'Twas not enough the Tayac flung his third son to
the waves, and lost his Queen, and saw his line doomed to perish from
the land; nay, he must lose more, lose all— lose e'en his stalwart, seedless
sons that did so please him with their strength, and that he hoped would
lead the Ahatchwhoops in their war against the English Devils! Mattassin
and Cohunkowprets! Did he not school them day by day to hate the
English? Did he not rehearse them in The Book of English Devils and
recount the warlike passions of their grandsire? And they were not hot-
blooded boys, or dogs in season, that blind with lust will mount a bitch
or a bulrush basket, whichever falls into their path; nay, they were grown
men of well-nigh two-score summers, canny fellows, sound of judgment,
and swore they loathed the English as did their father! None were more
ready than they to league our cause with the cause of the Piscataways and
Nanticokes; when the first black slave escaped to this island 'twas Mattassin
himself bade him welcome and made this town a haven for all who fled
the English; and 'twas not the Tayac Chicamec that first hit on the plan
of joining forces with the man Casteene and the naked warriors of the
north to drive the English into the sea—'twas golden Cohunkowprets: wife-
less, childless, and athirst for battle! Piscataways, Nanticokes, Chopticoes,
Mattawomans— all men envied the Ahatchwhoops, that boasted such a pair
of mighty chieftains; and Chicamec, too old to leave the island for the
first great meeting of our leaders— was he not proud to send Mattassin in
his stead?"

The Tayac Chicamec paused, overcome with bitter memory, and Eben-
ezer tactfully observed that he was familiar with the subsequent course of
Mattassin's life, from the Indian's encounter with Mary Mungummory to
his execution for murdering her sister Katy, the wife of Mynheer Tick.
At the same time, since the information might have some bearing on
his nebulous plan, he professed great curiosity about the other son, Cohun-
kowprets: surely he too had not been hanged for murdering English Devils?

"They have not hanged him," Chicamec said through Quassapelagh, and
at no time thitherto had his malice so contorted every feature. "Their

[ 6lO ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

crime against Cohunkowprets is more heinous ten times o'er than their
crime against Mattassin. Beautiful, golden son! Him too the Tayac Chica-
mec dispatched, but one full moon ago, upon an errand of great im-
portance: to go north with Drepacca and make treaties with the man Cas-
teene; him too the gods saw fit to lure from his goal, and in the same
wise, despite the sternest counsels of Drepacca . . ."

He had previously spoken of the Negro element in the town as one would
speak of a blessing by no means unalloyed, and had mentioned his allies'
envy of his sons. It now became clear to Ebenezer that Chicamec's par-
tiality to Quassapelagh was not only, as it were, skin deep: it masked a
deep distrust of the Africans, and especially of Drepacca, and dated, ap-
parently, from this embassy to Monsieur Casteene, the much-feared secret
agent of the French. Indeed, the poet went so far as to speculate that
Chicamec held Drepacca in some way responsible for Cohunkowprets' s de-
fection: perhaps those "sternest counsels'* were not of the sort a loyal ally
should give? Or the truly remarkable similarity of the brothers' seduction by
English women— was it possible that Chicamec regarded it as more than
an astonishing coincidence?

"In short/' Quassapelagh went on, "King Drepacca was obliged to leave
Cohunkowprets on the mainland near the Little Choptank, with the white-
skinned woman he lusted after, and the Tayac Chicamec hath not seen
his son these many days."

"A wondrous likeness of misfortune/' Ebenezer sympathized, "and a
sorry shame in itself! But what is this heinous crime the Tayac speaks of?"

"I had best answer that myself/' Quassapelagh replied, "and not rouse
farther the Tayac Chicamec's wrath. Rumor hath it that Cohunkowprets
hath taken an English name and married an English wife; he lives amongst
the English in an English house, speaks their tongue, and wears their
clothes. He is no longer an Ahatchwhoop in any wise, but looks upon his
people with contempt, and for aught we know may betray us to the English
king."

At this point Chicamec, who had held his peace impatiently for some
moments, began to speak again, and Quassapelagh was obliged to resume
the labors of translation.

"Behold him now, the Tayac Chicamec," he said, "his body enfeebled
by the cares of four-score summers, his island peopled with strangers and
ringed round by English Devils, his ancient dream of battle in the charge
of outland kings, his honor mired and smirched by faithless sons, and his
royal line doomed to perish in his person! The brother of Quassapelagh

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 6ll ]

must tell his friends these things if they ask him for what cause they lose
their members and go to the torch; the brother of Quassapelagh must seek
out the man called Henry Burlingame Three and tell him these things,
and tell him farther to flee the land at once—with his sons, if he hath any;
for already the Tayac Chicamec hath defied the gods to save him, but now
every English Devil in the countryside must die!"

9: AT LEAST ONE OF THE PREGNANT MYSTERIES IS
BROUGHT TO BED, WITH FULL MEASURE OF TRAVAIL,
BUT NOT AS YET DELIVERED TO THE LIGHT

EBENEZER HAD NOW NO DOUBTS AS TO THE MAIN LINES OF HIS PLAN,

though its efficacy was moot and he had no boundless faith in his courage
to propose it. He spoke at once, before his imagination drowned him in
alternatives and fears,

'This errand that the Tayac Chicamec sets me, dear Quassapelagh— is it
a condition of my freedom?"

The latter phrase required some moments, and Drepacca's assistance, for
translation, and occasioned some further moments of discussion in Indian
language, during which the poet's resolve bid fair to waver. Finally Drepacca
ventured, "Nothing is a true condition that cannot be enforced. We agree,
however, that if you are in sooth a brother of Quassapelagh,, you will not
shirk this errand."

Ebenezer steeled his nerve. "If the Tayac Chicamec murthers my three
friends, I will carry no message to Henry Burlingame Three» for the reason
that I shall die with them here. Tell this to him."

"My brother " Quassapelagh protested, but Drepacca translated the

declaration. Chicamec's eyes flashed anger and then towered to an expres-
sion as a flinty disappointment

"Howbeit," the poet continued, "if the Tayac Chicamec sees fit to concur
with the merciful opinion of his wise and powerful fellow kings and set
the four of us free, I pledge him this: I will go to Henry Burlingame Three
and tell him the story of his royal birth and the father who saved his life;
moreover I will bring him here, to this island, to see the Tayac Chicamec.
He knows the tongues of Piscataway and Nanticoke; father and son can
converse alone, without interpreters."

[ 6l2 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

All these things filled Quassapelagh and Drepacca with surprise; they
translated in fits and starts and exchanged impassive glances. Lest they dis-
tort his message through astonishment or apprehension, however, Ebenezer
had risen to his feet and delivered it at close range, in a clear deliberate
voice, to the aged king himself, accompanying the English words with un-
mistakable emphases and gestures: "I— bring Henry Burlingame Three—
here— to Chicamec. Chicamec and Henry Burlingame Three — talk— talk—
talk. No Quassapelagfi. No Drepacca. Chicamec and Henry Burlingame
Three— talk. And just to demonstrate my good faith, sirs: I will tell Henry
Burlingame Three to look— look— look for his brother Cohunkowprets.
Henry Burlingame Three will find Cohunkowprets and talk— talk— talk,
and haply he'll show him the error of his ways. How would that strike you,
old fellow? Chicanwc here; Cohunkowprets here; Henry Burlingame Three
right here!"

Whether he understood the conditions or not, Chicamec grasped enough
of the proposal to make him chatter feverishly at Quassapelagh.

"I thought 'twould not displease you," Ebenezer said grimly, and
resumed his seat. "But tell him 'tis all four of us or none," he added to
Quassapelagh. Now that his bid was made he nearly swooned at the bold-
ness of it. Bertrand and John McEvoy, who had heard the lengthy tales in
sick despair, came alive again, their faces squinted with suspense.

Some debate ensued, by the sound of it not sharply controversial, and at
the end Quassapelagh said, "My brother will not lightly be cured of his
foolhardiness when he learns it hath succeeded."

"I'Christ! Do you mean we're free?"

"The Tayac Chicamec yearns to behold his long-lost son," Drepacca de-
clared, in the same sternly proud tone used by Quassapelagh, "and albeit
he hath disowned his son Cohunkowprets, he counts an errant son as
better than no son at all, and so will entertain entreaties for his pardon.
The brother of Quassapelagh will be carried by canoe across the straits and
given one full moon to make good his pledge; the others will remain here
as hostages. If at the end of that time he hath produced neither
Cohunkowprets nor Henry Burlingame Three, the hostages will die."
The faces of the Englishmen fell.

"Ah, nay!" the poet objected. "If the Tayac Chicamec hath no faith in

me, let him slay me; if he trusts me, why, there is no need of hostages."

Chicamec smiled upon receiving this protest and countered that if the

brother of Quassapelagh made his promises in good faith, he need not fear

for the safety of the hostages.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [613]

"Very well," Ebenezer said desperately. ""But one companion, at least,
you must permit me, if you mean to limit my time. Suppose I lose my way
on the mainland, where I'm a stranger? Suppose Henry Burlingame Three
is not at home, and I must seek -him elsewhere, or suppose he insists we
find Cohunkowprets before we return here? Two men travel faster than
one on an errand like this."

Quassapelagh frowned. "There is reason in what you say. Two hostages,
then, instead of three."

"And your servant, my savior Bertrand, for your companion," Drepacca
added, "lest your time run out."

"Aye," Bertrand cried, speaking up at last, "I swear I am a very blood-
hound for finding folk, and this fellow Burlingame is e'en indebted to me
for some small favors. 'Sheart, we'd find the twain of 'em right off, Master
Eben and I!"

Chicamec nudged and scolded until the bargaining was translated for
his approval; then he frowned, but did not openly protest the new
amendment.

Ebenezer laid a hand on his valet's arm and addressed Drepacca. "This
man hath been some time my servant, and was my father's before in Eng-
land. He hath divers times betrayed or otherwise deceived me, yet for the
sake more of expediency than of malice, and I bear him no ill will for't.
Indeed, we are bound to each other by an Iliad of common tribulations,
and I shan't e'er see him perish while my own skin is still whole. But he is
given to presumptuousness and fear, and succumbs to opportunity like a
toper to strong drink; I dare not trust this errand to his hands."

Bertrand was aghast, but before he could muster more than a faint
B'm'faith, Ebenezer was pointing to McEvoy and had proceeded with his
statement.

"This man here was once my enemy, and whatever injury I have done
him accidentally, he hath repaid threefold a-purpose. Yet all he did, he did
on principle,, nor e'er hath stooped to dissembling or other fraud. Moreover
he is the soul of courage and resourcefulness, and our differences are behind
us. If two of us must scour the Province for Burlingame and Cohunkowprets
to save the other two, 'twere to our best interest and Chicamec's as well
that I choose this man to go with me.n

On this proposal neither Chicamec nor Quassapelagh ventured a judg-
ment; by tacit consent the decision was left to Drepacca, as the man whose
interest in the case was greatest, and after considering Ebenezer and the
dumfounded McEvoy carefully with his eyes, the African king nodded ap-

[614] TEE SOT-WEED FACTOR

proval. It was decided that the prisoners should return to their quarters
until the midday meal, whereafter the two fortunates would be ferried across
Limbo Straits to the mainland of Dorchester County; the remaining pair
would be preserved from any injury or molestation for one lunar month
and set free at any time before that term if either Burlingame or a repentant
Cohunkowprets appeared on the island.

" 'Tis but a hoax and treachery!*' Bertrvid complained to Ebenezer. "Is
this my reward for all I've suffered on your account? D'ye repay an old
friend thus, and trusty servant— practically your adviser, by your father's
own commission? Ye'll murther your only friend to save that lying pimp
McEvoy?" Tears of self-commiseration welled in his eyes.

"Nay, friend," Ebenezer answered, putting his arm about Bertrand's
shoulders as the guards escorted them from the royal hut. "If 'twere a ruse
I should choose you, but 'tis not, I swear. I mean to ransom all of us, as I
pledged/'

"Ah, 'tis easy for you to make grand vows, that will live in any case!
How will ye find Burlingame, that doth naught but sneak about the
Province in the guise of John Coode, or this other salvage, that ye ne'er
kid eyes upon? And e'en should ye stumble on 'em in yonder marsh across
the straits, d'ye think they'll give themselves up to these imps o' Hell? But
'tis no worry of yours, what happens to the man who once saved your life!"
Ebenezer could not, as a matter of fact, recall any such salvation, but he
let the claim stand unchallenged. "Prithee don't mistrust me, Bertrand; if
I can't make good my pledge in the time allowed, you'll see me trussed
beside you on yonder stakes."

The valet snorted. "I doubt it not, thou'rt so prone to folly! But we
shan't see McEvoy there, ye may wager, and ye'd not see me were I in his
boots!"

Seeing that he would not be consoled, Ebenezer said no more, though
Bertrand's bitterness gave him pain. They paused at the center of the com-
mon while the guards freed Captain Cairn from his post Unstrung by
fatigue, cramped muscles, terror, and incredulity, the old man could not
stand unaided; Ebenezer and McEvoy bore him to the prison-hut much
as Qaassapelagh and Drepacca had earlier borne the Tayac Chicamec be-
tween them. And whether because the ordeal had impaired his understand-
ing or because the reprieve was by contrast too gross an anticlimax for
rejoicing, he displayed no emotion at all when McEvoy told him the news.
Nor did McEvoy himself make any comment on the turn of events until
some two hours later, when he and Ebenezer had bid farewell to the listless

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [615

Captain- -and the still-acrimonious valet and had been ferried to a marshy
point of land north of the island, the southernmost extremity of Dorset,
where Limbo Straits joined the Chesapeake to a broad and choppy sound.
There the two were put ashore at what appeared to be a long-abandoned
pier, buckled by ice and half consumed by dry rot, and were left to make
the best of their way on foot.

"We're in luck," the Irishman said soberly. "This is the very road Bandy
Lou and I came down to reach the island. Tis half a hundred miles from
here to Cambridge, but ye can't mistake the path, and there's farms and
trapper's cabins along the way."

"Thank Heav'n for that," Ebenezer replied; "we've no time to lose. Tis
more likely Burlingame's in St. Mary's than in Cambridge, but haply we'll
find this Cohunkowprets by the way, if we enquire enough."

They walked up the muddy road for a while in silence, engaged in
separate reflections. The afternoon was warm for late December, but by no
means balmy. On every hand the salt marsh and open water extended flat
to the horizon: brown marsh grass and cattails rustled in the wet west wind;
rails and pipers picked for food along the mud flats, and from nests in the
silvered limbs of salt-cured pines, ospreys and eagles rose and hung on the
breeze.

Ebenezer did not fail to observe that his companion's spirit was in some
way troubled, and assumed, not without a certain satisfaction, that
McEvoy's problem had to do with the proper way of expressing his gratitude
and obligation; but he left it to the Irishman to take the initiative in speak-
ing his mind. Indeed, Ebenezer's own spirit was far from tranquil; he
reacted against the boldness of his stratagem, for one thing, now that he
was committed to it: with no food, no money, no means of transportation,
and no more than a general notion of their quarry's whereabouts, how
could they dream of succeeding in their quest? Moreover, now that he was
out of immediate peril all his former problems and anxieties reasserted
themselves sharply: the loss of his estate, his desertion of Joan Toast, his
father's wrath, his sister's safety ... It was too much: despair stretched
brown about him like the salt marsh, unrelieved to his fancy's far horizons.

McEvoy had found a walking stick in the path; now he swung and
bobbed a cattail with it.

"Marry come up!" he swore. "I am unmanned in any case!"

"Eh?" Ebenezer looked over in surprise. "How's that?"

McEvoy scowled and slashed at another cattail. "Ye saved my life, that's
how it is, and I'm eternally beholden fort! What's worse, ye'd every cause

[616] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

to hate me; I was owing to ye already for what I've put ye to. But ye save
my life instead!" He was unable to raise his eyes to Ebenezer's. "I'faith,
how can a man live with't? If the salvages had gelded me, at least I could
have hollowed like a hero and died soon after; here ye've gelded me none-
theless, but I must grovel and sing your praises for't, and live a steer's life
till Heav'n knows when!"

"But that's absurd!" the blushing poet protested. 'How can you believe
I want to humble you? Twas a practical expedient; not a favor."

McEvoy shook his head. "Ye've no need to go on thus; 'tis my con-
science makes me grovel, not you, and the more ye protest I'm not
beholden, the deeper I sink in the Slough of Obligation. I must love ye,
says my conscience, and that voice makes me despise ye, and that despisal
makes me farther loathe myself for crass ingratitude."

"Ah, prithee, don't whip yourself so! Put by these thoughts!"

"There I sink, another hand's-breadth in the Mire!" McEvoy grumbled,
keeping his eyes averted. "If only ye'd call for gratitude o'ermuch, I might
hate ye and have done with't! As't is, I am fair snared, a fawning castrato."

Up to this point the poet had been more embarrassed than annoyed, for
McEvby's confession made him realize that he had in fact enjoyed, most
unchristianly, a feeling of moral superiority to his comrade in consequence
of having saved the fellow's life. His magnanimous gesture had indeed been
more than just expedient to his mission, and though he sincerely wished
that McEvoy would give over this self-flagellation, he also— and, as it were,
contradictorily— sincerely enjoyed urging him do so. But now his embar-
rassment was supplanted by irritation, perhaps directed at himself as much
as at McEvoy; he too fetched up a walking stick, and laid low a brace of
cattails on his side of the path.

"Henry Burlingame once told me," he said coldly, "that in ethical
philosophy the schoolmen speak of moralities of motive and moralities of
deed. By which they mean, a wight may do a good deed for a bad reason,
or an ill deed with good intentions." He unstrung another cattail and
slashed at a fourth. "Now, 'tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the
deed and o'erlook the motive, and of learned folk to discount the deed and
lay open the soul of the doer. Burlingame declared the difference 'twixt
sour pessimist and proper gentleman lies just here: that the one will judge
good deeds by a morality of motive and ill by a morality of deed, and so
condemn the twain together, whereas your gentleman doth the reverse,
and hath always grounds to pardon his wayward fellows."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [617]

"Tis all profound, I'm sure/' McEvoy began, "but how it bears
upon "

"Hear me out," Ebenezer broke in; he was surprised, but by no means
displeased, by his own insistence. "The point oft is, methinks I see two
pathways from this silly mire you wallow in. The first is to appraise whate'er
I say and do from a morality of motive, and you'll find grounds for more
contempt than gratitude: I chose you in lieu of Bertrand purely for revenge,
to make you roast in the fire of conscience and to even the score for
Bertrand's past offenses; I urge you not to thank me overmuch, to the end
of driving you to thank me all the more . . ,"

McEvoy sighed. "D'ye think I've not clutched at that broomstraw
already?"

"Aha. And to no avail? Thou'rt still unmanned by gratitude?" Swish
went the stick, and another cattail dangled from its stalk. "Then here's
your other pathway, friend: turn your morality of motive upon yourself,
and see that behind this false predicament lies simple cowardice."

The Irishman looked up for the first time, his eyes flashing angrily. "What
drivel is this?"

"Aye, cowardice" Ebenezer declared. "Why is't you make no move to
second my pledge to Chicamec? Forget this casuistry of who's obliged to
whom and mortgage your life along with mine! Bind yourself to come
hither with me one month from now, when our quest hath borne no fruit,
and we'll commend ourselves together to Chicamec's mercies! How doth
that strike you, eh? A fart for these airy little gonads of the soul; lay your
flesh-and-blood privates on the line, as I have, and we're quit for all
eternity!" He laughed and slashed triumphantly with his stick. "How's that
for a pathway, John McEvoy? FChrist, 'tis a grande avenue, a camino red,
a very boulevard; at one end lies your Slough of False Integrity— to call it
by its name on the Map of Truth— and at the other stands the storied
Town . . . where Responsibility rears her golden towers . . ." He faltered;
for a moment his voice lost the irony with which he had strung out the
elaborate figure, but he quickly recovered it. "There, now; take a stroll in
that direction, and if you vow thou'rt still a gelding, why then sing descant
and be damned to you!"

McEvoy made no reply, but it was clear he felt the sting of the poet's
challenge: the anger went out of his face, and he put his stick to the homely
chore of helping him walk. As for Ebenezer, his outburst had raised his*
pulse, respiration, and temperature; his step took on a spring; exhilaration

[ 6l8 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

narrowed his eyes and buzzed in his fancy; he opened his coat to dry the
perspiration and unstrung a phalanx of cattails with one smite.

Surely it was no more than coincidental that this buoying of his spirits
was followed not long after by good fortune. The marsh through which
they walked was not a large one by the standards of the county, and two
hours sufficed to bring them to considerable stretches of high ground and
even fields which bore the scars of cultivation. They passed a number of
shacks and small farmhouses, and as the weak winter daylight failed they
began to look about for lodging. To expect an inn in such desolate country-
side would of course have been idle; they turned their attention to a barn
far up the road, more prosperous looking than any they'd met thus far, and
agreed that they were not likely to find better quarters before dark. Ebene-
zer's position was that they should ask the owner's permission to sleep in
the hayloft, on the chance he might have room for them in the house;
McEvoy on the other hand, held out for stealing unnoticed into the hay,
on the grounds that the planter might send them packing if they asked
for his consent. Their debate on the relative merits of these strategies was
interrupted by the approach of a wagon from behind them, the first traffic
they had encountered all afternoon, and they stepped off the road to let
it pass.

"Whoa, there, Aphrodite; whoa, girl! Climb up here, laddies, and rest
your feet a spelll"

From a distance the driver had seemed to be a man, but now they saw
it to be a dumpy, leather-faced woman in die hat and deerskin coat of a
fur-trapper. The light was poor, but even in the dark Ebenezer would have
known her at once by her voice and the circumstance of her driving a
wagon.

*TGod, what chance is this?" He laughed incredulously and stepped
close to convince himself. "Is't Mary Mungummory I see?"

"No other soul," Mary answered cheerily. "Get up with ye now, and tell
me whither thou'rt bound."

They climbed to the wagon-seat readily, glad to rest their legs, and
McEvoy named their destination and intent.

Mary shook her head. "Well, lads, 'tis your own affair where ye sleep,
but take care; 'tis a cruel and cranky wight owns yonder bam. Thou'rt free
to sleep back in the wagon, if ye wish to; I've no end o' quilts and coverlets
back there, and nobody to use 'em till we reach Church Creek. Giddap,
Aphrodite!"

She whipped up her white mare, and they proceeded up the road.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 6ig ]

"Mary Mungummory!" Ebenezer cried again. "'Tis a proper miracle!
How is't thou'rt here in this Avemus of a marsh?"

" Tis the fundament o* Dorset, right enough/' the woman admitted,
"but it's on my regular route nonetheless. Just now I'm out o' girls/' she
explained to McEvoy, who plainly did not know what to make of her,
"but there's one in Church Creek I've heard is ripe for whoring."

"Ah Mary!" laughed Ebenezer, still astonished. "Thou'rt the person I've
yearned all day to see, and you have forgot me! What news I have to tell
you!"

"There's many a lad yearns to see this wagon down the lane," Mary
observed, but peered at her passenger more closely. "Why, praise God, now!
' Is't Eben Cooke the poet, that I rescued from a comcrib? I declare it is,
and your poor wife told me ye'd flown to England!"

McEvoy frowned, and the poet blushed with shame. "You've seen
Joan?"

"Haven't I seen her!" Mary clucked her tongue. "I saw her this very
week, near dead o' pox and opium— to say naught o' her broken heart.
Didn't I tell her to come in the wagon with me and let me give her a cure?
Not that there's aught can save her now, but 'twould keep the salvages off
her, at the least. Ah, Mister Cooke, ye did wrong by that girl, that asked
such a trifle of ye. Are ye bound for Maiden, to take your medicine like a
man?"

"I— I am/' Ebenezer said miserably, "just as soon as I'm free to. There's
much I must tell you, Mary, as we go along . . . But i'faith, I've lost my
manners! John McEvoy, this is Mary Mungummory."

"The Traveling Whore o' Dorset," Mary added proudly, shaking hands
in the masculine fashion with McEvoy.

"So she calls herself," Ebenezer declared, "but she is the most Christian
lady in the Province of Maryland, I swear." He. then introduced McEvoy
as an old and dear friend from London, and though he could scarcely wait
to tell Mary about the coming Indian uprising, her late lover Charley
Mattassin's brothers, and the urgent mission to which he was committed,
his curiosity and bad conscience led him first to inquire further about the
state of things at Maiden.

Mary cocked her head and clucked her tongue again. "There's much
hath changed since ye ran off: all manner o' queer goings-on, that nor
Joan Toast nor any soul else seems to know the sense of— myself included,
that left my girls and bade Bill Smith adieu as soon as Tim Mitchell dis-
appeared/'

[620] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Is my father there, do you know? Andrew Cooke? And what of the
cooper?"

"There's a wight that calls himself Andrew Cooke, all right," Mary said.
"Whether he's your father is past Joan's proving, and mine, that ne'er laid
eyes on him in England. He is a hard-hearted wretch in any case, I swear!
Bill Smith's there too and, still hath title to the place, albeit I hear there's
every sort o' law-suits on the fire. But i'Christ, Til say no more; there's
much afoot, that ye'll learn of better for yourself." She chuckled. "What a
wondrous stir 'twill make when you walk in! Better slip a cedar shingle in
your breeches, like a proper truant!"

"One question more," begged Ebenezer. "I must know whether my sister
Anna is there with Father."

'Te mean to say ye do have a sister?" Mary glanced at him thoughtfully
and urged the mare on through the twilight

"You have news of her? Where is she?"

"Nay/' Mary answered, "I've not heard aught of her. The truth is, this
wight that calls himself your father told Bill Smith's lawyer— ye recall that
blaspheming thief Dick Sowter?— told Sowter ye was the only heir to
Cooke's Point: no brothers or sisters. Then when some fellow recollected
ye was born twins, he changed his story and swore the other twin died o'
the Plague."

• "What? This is fantastic!" Ebenezer pressed the woman for a description
of this Andrew Cooke; the detail of the withered right arm convinced him
it was his father, but she could shed no light on the strange assertions, nor
was she inclined to speak of the matter at all.

'Te'll see what's what soon enough, I'll wager," she repeated, and her
expression showed such uncharacteristic glumness that the poet felt obliged
to pursue the subject no farther. By this time their intended lodging was
far behind them, and marshy ground began to appear once more not far
from the road. A cold wind sprang up in the gathering darkness.

"Marry, I've so much to tell you!" he cried with forced enthusiasm. "I
scarce know where to commence!"

"Why, then, think it out tonight and start fresh in the morning," Mary
replied. With her whip she pointed to a lighted window in the distance.
"Tender's where we'll stop: 'tis an old friend o' mine lives there."

"FGod, don't put me off! If aught I said distressed you, prithee forgive
me for't; but what I have to say concerns you as well as me."

"Indeed, sir? How might that be?"

Ebenezer hesitated. "Well—did you know Charley Mattassin had a
brother?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 621 ]

She regarded him thoughtfully. "Aye, a salvage down on Bloodsworth
Island. What do ye know of him?"

Ebenezer laughed distractedly. "There's so much to tell! Stay, now—
did you know he had two brothers, and Henry Burlingame— that is to say,
Tim Mitchell, that I said had the same strange character as your Charley

I'm all entangled! Tell me this, Mary: when did you last see Tim

Mitchell, and where is he now?"

Full of wonder, Mary replied that she had not seen Tim Mitchell for
weeks, even months; it was rumored, in fact, that he had not been Captain
Mitchell's son at all, but an impostor of some sort, the agent of certain
powerful and unidentified interests hostile to the equally powerful and un-
identified syndicate in which Captain Mitchell was a major figure. Tim's
disappearance had been the occasion for great alarm and mutual suspicion
among Captain Mitchell, William Smith, and the other operatives in the
organization, but for Mary herself, by her own admission, it had been a
stroke of good fortune, for he had been a hard taskmaster for her girls at
Maiden.

"Then you don't know where he is?" Ebenezer interrupted. "I must
find him within a fortnight, or I and three companions will die— nay, I'll
explain in time. Know, Mary, that the man you called Tim Mitchell is
really Henry Burlingame the Third, son of the Tayac Chicamec of the
Ahatchwhoops and brother to Charley Mattassin and Cohunkowprets,
whom we must find also or perish! All we know of him is that he was sent
on a mission by his father, as was Mattassin before him, and like Mattassin
he was detained by some English Calypso " He smiled in order to indi-
cate to Mary that he had not betrayed her confidence to McEvoy. "This
was some days or weeks ago,. I gather, and the Tayac hath not seen him
since. I hoped you might have heard rumors in the County of a half-breed
salvage turned proper Englishman."

"Dear Heav'n!" Mary threw back her head and closed her eyes. "Did ye
.say he plays the Englishman, Mister Cooke?"

"That is the story as Chicamec heard it, and 'sheart, how it griped his
English-hating bowels! The man took an English name, an English wife,
and an English house, and hath turned his back on salvagery. Have you
heard of such a fellow?"

"What did ye say was his English name?" Mary's voice was husky; her
face quite white.

"I've no idea. Cohunkowprets, so we're told, means Bill-of-ihe-Goose.
What ails you Mary? Have you seen him, then?"

[ 622 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Mary turned the mare Aphrodite stiffly into the lane of the lighted cabin,
and the occupant stepped outside with a lantern to meet them.

"Nay, Mister Cooke, I've not seen him, but I have heard tell of a half-
breed named Rumbly: Billy Rumbly "

"You have? Marry come up> John, this sainted lady will save me once
again!" He squeezed her plump arm, but instead of her usual meaty laugh
she gave a groan and shrank from his cordiality.

"What in the name of Heaven is wrong with you, Mary?" he demanded.
Already their host for the night recognized the sailcloth-covered wagon
and called his greetings down the lane.

"No time to tell ye now," the woman muttered. "I'll spin the tale for ye
tomorrow morning on our way to Church Creek-— that's where this Billy
Rumbly's said to live, and I was bound for his place ere ever I met ye back
yonder on the road."

"Bound for there " Ebenezer's laugh rang over the marsh. "D'you

hear that, John? TJiis woman's an angel of God, I swear! Not only hath she
heard of Lord Cohunkowprets; she means to pay him a call!" He turned to
Mary again and said slyly, "I'll wager old Aphrodite yonder will feel the
whip, now you know who it is thou'rt bound for!"

Mary shook her head slowly. "Go to, go to, Mister Cooke. Go to." They
were close enough to the lantern of their host for Ebenezer to see the
consternation on her face, and though he could not imagine what so
alarmed her, his heart turned cold.

"D'ye not recall who I am, and what business I have in Church Creek?
I am the Traveling Whore o' Dorset, Mister Cooke, and the trollop I lately
got wind of, that may wish to join my traveling company—WTzod, Aphro-
dite! Whoa, girl!— I have a notion— just a notion, mind ye now-— this tart
may be your sister . . ."

10: THE ENGLISHING OF BILLY RUMBLY IS RELATED,
PURELY FROM HEARSAY, BY THE TRAVELING WHORE
O' DORSET

SUPPLICATE, CAJOLE, AND THREATEN AS HE MIGHT EBENEZER COULD NOT

prevail upon Mary Mungummory to speak farther on the subject of Anna's
whereabouts and circumstances. She saluted their host, a buckskinned, thin-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 623 ]

grinned, begrizzled old hermit of a fur-trapper, and would not hear the
poet's desperate expostulations.

The old fellow held up his lantern and was clearly pleased at what its
light disclosed, for he sprang about like a drunken frog, croaking for joy.

"Mary Mungummory! I swear 'tis old Mary at that!"

Mary grunted. "Did ye look to see Helen o' Troy in the Dorset marsh
this time of the night?" She talked over-loudly, as one would to a man
partially deaf. Her voice was rough with concealed affection, and whether
he grasped the allusion or not, the old man hopped and snorted apprecia-
tively. He climbed up onto the side of the wagon and peeked inside as
Mary drove Aphrodite up to his cabin.

"Don't strain your eyes, ye old lecher," she shouted. "The cupboard's
bare till I reach Church Creek." She changed the subject quickly. "These
here are friends o' mine, Harvey, down on their luck. If ye'll stand dinner
and lodging for the three of us, I'll make it up to ye next time around."

"What fiddle is this?" Harvey cried, feigning insult. "D'ye think I'd not
ha' took after ye, had ye not turned in my lane? I looked at the moon three
nights ago, and I thought 'twas nigh time to see Mary's wagon again." He
sprang off the wagon the instant it stopped at his cabin. "Come inside and
thaw, now; there's partridge and duck a-plenty, and cider to drown the
lot o' ye!"

"We thank ye," McEvoy said loudly. Ebenezer was too distraught to
acknowledge the man's charity with more than a nod; when their host ran
ahead to open the cabin door, the poet whispered a final fierce entreaty to
Mary to relieve his tortured imaginings with explanation.

"There's no more Christian man in Dorset than Harvey Russecks," she
declared, ignoring him. "And few with less cause to feel kindness for his
fellow creatures. He's a brother to Sir Harry Russecks in Church Creek."

Her tone implied that this last assertion was intended to be revealing,
but to Ebenezer, yawning and shivering with volatile frustration as they
entered the rude log cabin, it meant nothing at all.

"I'll just spit us a brace o' partridge on the fire," Harvey declared, and
jumped to prepare the food. "Haply ye'll pass the cider-jug round, Mary;
old Harvey's got no cups to offer ye gentlemen." He fussed about like a
new bride, and soon two birds were roasting over the pine logs in the
fireplace. There was only one chair in the cabin, but the wood floor boasted
two black-bear pelts, as warm and easy a seat as one could ask.

"If ye don't know the miller Harry Russecks," Mary went on, "thou'rt
among the blest indeed." She addressed herself to Ebenezer; when the

[624] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

poet looked away, wincing at the irrelevancy of her discourse, she flared her
nostrils with a peculiar anger— as if to say "I too am pained by the
present state of affairs, but I don't use my pain as an excuse to be
ungracious"— and turned to McEvoy instead. "This Harry Russecks is the
lyingest, cheatingest, braggingest bully ye'll e'er mischance to meet; thinks
he's a London peer, doth the wretch, and browbeats his neighbors to call
him 'Sir Harry' all the while he gives 'em short weight on their flour and
meal. Truth is, he's no more a nobleman than his brother Harvey here,
that's the son of a common house-servant and not ashamed to own it. 'Tis
Mrs. Russecks is an orphan child o' the peerage— the miller's wife, and as
fine a woman as her husband is the contrary. The bitter part is, her father
was the gentleman that the miller's father served* but fortune used her so
ill their positions turned arsy-turvy: she was a starving orphan and Harry
a prosperous miller, and he married her a-purpose to tickle his vanity."

"Ye don't say!" McEvoy shook his head in polite wonder and glanced
uncomfortably from Ebenezer to their host, who pottered about, oblivious
to the narrative.

"He can't hear me, never fear," Mary assured him. "Poor devil had both
his ears boxed .till the drams cracked, as I hear, and ye can lightly guess
who boxed 'em."

'The miller?" McEvoy asked.

Mary pressed her lips and nodded. "Both brothers grew up with her, at
first in her father's manor-house and then on neighboring farms in Church
Creek, and the story hath it they both were in love with her from the first,
but Harvey was too shy and respectful o' place to do aught but wet-dream
of her, e'en when she was a-beggaring, while Harry's lust was public as the
moon. 'Twas when Harry wed her that Harvey took to living here in the
marsh, and some years after, when he scolded Sir Harry for abusing the
girl and putting on airs, the bully boxed his ears and well-nigh ground
him into cornmeal."

The Irishman clucked his tongue.

"How she came to be orphaned is a story in itself," Mary went on
doggedly. "She's a lady o' spirit, is Roxie Russecks, and don't think she
comes fawning at the great lout's beck and call! Why, I could tell ye one
or two things she hath contrived "

"No morel" Ebenezer cried, clutching his ears. Even the hard-of-hearing
trapper turned round. "I thank you humbly for your hospitality!" Ebenezer
shouted to him. "And I've no wish to appear ungracious or ungrateful fpr'tl

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [625]

But Miss Mungummory here hath news of my long-lost sister, and I shall
perish of anxiety if she keeps it from me any longer/7

Harvey looked questioningly at Mary. "What is't ails the wight?"

"He's not the only poor wretch here on tenterhooks/' Mary snapped. "He
hath news of his own close to my heart, but the tales are long and mazy,
and here's no place to spin 'em out. Let him wait till we're on the road."

But the trapper joined his protests to Ebenezer's.

"No pleasure pleasures me as doth a well-spun tale* be't sad or merry,
shallow or deep! If the subject's privy business, or unpleasant, who cares a
fig? The road to Heaven's beset with thistles, and methinks there's many
a cow-pat on't as well. And what matter if your folk are drawn from life?
Tis not likely I'll ha' met 'em, or know 'em from your telling if e'er I should!
Call 'em what names ye will: in a tale they're less than themselves, and
more. Besides which, if ye have the art to make 'em live— 'sheart!— thou'rt
nowise liable for what the rascals do, no more than God Almighty for the
lot of us. As for length, fie on't!" He raised his horny finger. "A bad tale's
long though it want but a single eyeblink for the telling, and a good tale
short though it takes from St. Swithin's to Michaelmas to have done with't.
Ha! And the plot is tangled, d'ye say? Is't more knotful or bewildered than
the skein o' life itself, that a good tale tangles the better to unsnarl? Nay,
out with your story, now, and yours as well, sir, and shame on the both
o' ye thou'rt not commenced already! Spin and tangle till the Dog-star sets
f the Bay—nor fear I'll count ye idle gossips: a tale well wrought is the
gossip o' the gods, that see the heart and hidden point o' life on earth; the
seamless web o' the world; the Warp and the Woof . . , I' Christ I do love
a story, sirs! Tell away!"

Even Mary was plainly impressed by her old friend's eloquence, and
though her scowl only darkened as he concluded, it was the scowl no longer
of recalcitrance but of grudging assent, and she agreed that tales would be
told when the partridge was finished.

"The fact oft is," she said loudly to Harvey, "you may have as much to
say as any of us. 'Tis the half-breed Rumbly we're interested in, amongst
other matters: the Englishing of Billy Rumbly. Master Cooke here can
start us off, that hath some mysterious business with the wight, and then
we'll each add what we can. But not till the birds are done."

Harvey Russeck's face brightened at the name Billy RumbZy, which was
evidently not new to him, and squinted a bit at the mention of Ebenezer's
surname. 'Thou'rt the poet chap that gave away his property?"

"The same," Ebenezer replied, no longer embarrassed by this identifica-

[626] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

tion. <rYou all may wait for your dinners if you wish; since I'm to start, I'll
start right now, listen who will, and tell you why not only my life but the
life of every white-skinned person in the Province may depend on my finding
a salvage called Cohunkowprets, within the month, and persuading him
to listen to humane reasoning." He proceeded to tell them about the search
for his sister Anna; the capture of his party on Bloodsworth Island; the
grand conspiracy of fugitive Negroes and disaffected Maryland Indians, who
threatened to ally themselves with Monsieur Casteene and the League of
Six Nations to effect a general massacre of the English Colonies. He ex-
plained his relationship with Drepacca and Quassapelagh, and the peculiar
status of the Tayac Chicamec in the triumvirate. As briefly as the complexity
of the subject permitted he described the history of Chicamec's antagonism
towards the English, the ironic fates of his three sons, and the consequent
insecurity of his present position in the conspiracy— an insecurity on which
the poet had capitalized to gain the conditional release of McEvoy and
himself. Majy Mungummory and Harvey Russecks hung astonished on the
tale; had not McEvoy been already familiar with the greater portion of it
and thus able to devote his attention at times to other matters, the two
partridges would have burned untended on the spit. Russecks allowed his
guest to carve and serve the birds himself, too absorbed in the poet's nar-
ration even to notice this lapse from the conventions of hosthood.

"Marry sir, do I have't aright?" he asked incredulously. "Ye must deliver
Cohunkowprets or the other wight to Bloodsworth Island within the
month, or else the salvages will bum the two hostages?"

"They'll burn the three of us," Ebenezer affirmed. " Tis my fault they're
on Bloodsworth Island."

Both his listeners glanced questioningly at McEvoy, who lowered his eyes
to the food and said— in a voice surely too low for the trapper to catch— "I
owe Mister Cooke my life; that's true enough. God knows whether I'm hero
enough not to renege on the debt."

"The fact is," Ebenezer concluded, to draw their attention away from
his companion, "we're all of us like to lose our scalps anon, when the war
commences, apd there's reason to think 'twill commence when this same
month of mine expires. They seemed quite indifferent whether I spread
the news of their plot; 'tis as if they feel our militia's not a match for them."

"They're right enough there," declared their host. "Copley and Nicholson
both refused help to New York, e'en when the Schenectady folk were
murthered, and 'tis fplly to look for help from Andros in Virginia or the
Quaker William Penn: they'd like naught better than to see us butchered

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [627]

by the salvages and Negroes, for all they might be next at the block them-
selves." He shook his head. "The worst oft is, an honest man can't hate
the wretches for't. When a poor wight's driven from his rightful place, and
pushed, and pushed, and pushed— to say naught o' being clapped in
hobbles and sold off the block like a dray-horse— f faith, 'tis only natural he'll
fight the man that's pushing him, if he hath any spirit left in him. I've no
great wish to lose my scalp, sirs, but I swear I'm half on the Indians' side o'
the question."

"My sentiments to the letter," Mary agreed.

"And mine," said Ebenezer; "not alone because there's justice in their
cause, but also because— how much life teaches!— there's a deal of the sal-
vage in all of us. But as you say, 'twere better to keep one's scalp than lose
it. 'Tis for that reason I must find Chicamec's sons: Burlingarne I know is a
very Siren for persuasion, and this Cohunkowprets, if he hath in sooth
embraced the English cause . . . my plan is to apply to his new loyalties,
if I can contrive it; send him back to the Ahatchwhoops as a penitent
prodigal; let him assume his place as prince of the bloody realm, where he
can do his best to influence Quassapelagh and Drepacca, and haply forestall
the massacre. Tis a chancy gambit, I'll own, but desperate cases want
desperate physic; and until Mary, or the twain of you, tell your tales, I
know naught of Cohunkowprets save that he met some English woman
in Dorset County and deserted his people then and there to woo her, just

as his brother Mattassin before him " he stopped and blushed. "Forgive

me, Mary."

The woman waved his apology away and sighed a corpulent sigh.
"Naught to forgive, Mister Cooke; naught to forgive. I feel no shame at
loving Charley Mattassin, nor any regret nor anger at his end. If I could

believe his brother was like him Nay no matter! We'll learn soon

enough, and in any case " She paused, and a little tremor shook her.

"What I mean, the line 'twixt pleasure and pain grows hard to fix in their

extremes, and I'Christ, I am no greybeard philosopher, but think o' the

saints ye h£ar of, that have visions o' God Almighty: I doubt not 'tis a
glorious moment, but a body scarce could bear it more than once or twice!
I'm minded of some old scoundrels Charley read about in his Homer and
his Virgil, and the two of us were wont to chuckle at— their names are
gone, but one was the father of Achilles and the other of Aeneas "

Ebenezer supplied the names Peleus and Anchises; he was surprised
anew at the extent, not only of the Indian's late forays into Western cut

[628] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

hire but also of Mary's pertinent recollections, and McEvoy, who knew
nothing of the curious relationship, was flabbergasted.

"Those were the very wights," Mary affirmed. "Each had bumped his
bacon with a goddess, just one time, and the twain of 'em were ruined for
life by't. No doubt 'twas a bargain at the price, but there are bargains a
poor soul can't afford but once. D'ye see my point?"

They did— Ebenezer and the trapper, in any case— and Mary went on.

"Now mind, I'm not saying this Billy Rumbly is Mattassin's brother:
I've ne'er laid eyes on him, as Harvey hath, and Charley ne'er spoke over-
much about his family. But what I've heard o" the wretch and his English
woman I can fathom to the core. Let callow folk laugh: I know his heart
and hers as well! There's something in't of what Mister Cooke declared
just now, and what we discoursed on once before in the Cambridge stables
—that there's a piece o' the salvage in us all. Tis that and more: the dark
of 'em hath somewhat to do with't, I know. What drives so many planter's
ladies to raise their skirts for some great black buck of a slave, like the
Queen in The Thousand and One Nights? FGod, the things I see and
hear of in my rounds! Methinks 'tis an itch for all we lose as proper citizens
—something in us pines for Chaos, for the black and lawless Pit. I've seen
these ladies at their pleasure and taken my share oft; the sweat of such
rutting hath the cold, sweet stink o' Death."

She had been looking at the pine logs on the fire; now she seemed to
become freshly aware of her listeners' presence. She straightened her
shoulders, rubbed her nose as vigorously as if it itched, and sniffed self-
consciously. "But that's no tale, there, is it, Harvey?"

"Not a bit oft," Harvey replied. " 'Tis a great mistake for a tale-teller to
philosophize and tell us what his story means; haply it doth not mean
what he thinks at all, at least to the rest of us." Despite the mock severity
of his tone, however, the trapper was clearly impressed by Mary's analysis,
as were Ebenezer and McEvoy. As he had in the Cambridge stables on
the occasion Mary referred to, Ebenezer recalled with anguish his behavior
aboard the Cyprian and his flagellation of Joan Toast in Captain Mitchell's
house; what ghosts, he wondered with a shiver, had Mary conjured in the
hermit and the Irishman?

" Tis what I thought of, in any case," she said good-naturedly, "when
Roxie Russecks told me about Billy Rumbly and the Church Creek Virgin."

Ebenezer bit his lip, and Mary hurried into the story.

"Just a fortnight ago or thereabouts this woman came to Church Creek,
all alone, with no baggage or chattels save what little she could carry, and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [629]

went from house to house looking for lodgings. She was a spinster of thirty
or so, as I hear't, and declared she was new out of England; gave her name
as Miss Bromly of London/'

"Dear Heav'n!" Ebenezer cried. "I know that girl! She was our neighbor
when we lived on Plumtree Street and my sister's best friend for years!"
He laughed aloud with sharp relief. "Aye, there's the answer! She spoke of
me, and ye took her for my sister! What business hath Miss Bromly in
Maryland?"

"She may not e'en be here," Mary answered darkly. "Hear me out. As I
say, she gave her name as Miss Meg Bromly, but when folk asked her what
her business was in Church Creek, and how long she meant to hire lodgings
for, she had no ready reply at all. Some took her for a runaway redemptioner
—there's been a flock of 'em lately in the County; others thought she was
the mistress o' some planter, that meant to keep her in Church Creek;
others yet believed she was got in the family way and either turned out by
her father or sent to the country for her confinement— albeit she showed no
signs oft in the waist. Now, 'tis rare to find a maiden lady of thirty years
anywhere, but especially in the Plantations, and rarer yet to find one
traveling alone, without servants or proper baggage, and not e'en able to
state her business plainly. Add to this, she was nowise ugly or deformed,
and spoke as civil as any lady— she could have had her choice o' husbands
for the asking, I daresay— 'tis small wonder the folk she applied to, whate'er
their sundry views, all took her for a bad woman, either a whore already or
a whore-to-be, and had naught to do with her. The ladies, that is to say. As
for the men, they quite agreed; they slavered and drooled after her like
boars to a salt young sow, and made all manner of lewd remarks and
propositions. If any man doubted she was a whore, they doubted no more
when she took rooms at Russecks's inn: 'tis no inn, really, but a common
store and tavern that blackguard of a miller owns— Harvey's brother.
There's an upstairs to't, no more than a loft walled off into stalls with
pallets; 'tis where my girls set up shop when we're in the neighborhood, ere
we go on to Cambridge and Cooke's Point.

"Well, she stood them off as haughty as ye please, but they reckoned
she was holding out for a higher price. Finally they asked her to name her
hire, whereupon she drew a little pistol from her coat and replied, she'd
charge a man his life just to lay hands on her, and King William himself
couldn't buy her maidenhead. With that she went up into the loft, and no
man in the room durst follow her. Thenceforth they called her the Virgin
o' Church Creek, merely for a tease, inasmuch as they all believed she was

[ 630 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the mistress of Governor Nicholson, or John Coode, or some other impor-
tant man. She came and went whene'er she pleased, and no man touched
her. Now and again she'd make enquiries of 'em, whether they knew aught
of the state o' things at Maiden, on Cooke's Point, and o' course they
knew Maiden to be the fleshpot o' Dorset County, so they took her all the
more surely for a fashionable whore and answered her with lecherous jokes
and nonsense.

" Twas only a few days later, so Roxie told me, this half-breed Indian
buck came into Church Creek, that nobody recalled ever seeing before. As
a rule, the salvages travel in pairs when they come to town, but this wight
was all alone; he strode into Russecks's store as bold as ye please, put a
silver coin on the table, and called for a glass o' rum!"

"Ah, that can't be Cohunkowprets, can it, John?" Ebenezer asked
McEvoy. "I doubt he knew enough English to order rum."

But McEvoy was not so certain. "He might well have learned from Dick
Parker, ye know; Dick Parker himself learned good English in two or three
months."

"And Charley Mattassin in less time yet," Mary added, and continued
her narration. "This salvage was so fierce-looking, Harry Russecks gave him
his rum with no argument, and he drank it off like water, 'Twas plain he'd
never tasted liquor before, for he gagged and choked on't, but when 'twas
down he called for another to follow the first. (All this is my Charley to the
letter, Mister Cooke— bold as brass and bound to learn all in a single
gulp.) By this time the men saw a chance for some sport with him, for
there's no more stupid drunk than a drunken salvage. They poured him his
rum and asked his name, which he gave as Bill-o'-the-Goose "

"That's itl" Ebenezer aud McEvoy cried out at once,

'The Tayac Chicamec told us Cohunkowprets means Goosebeak,"
Ebenezer explained. "Why he bears the name I shan't tell here, only that

" He blushed. "I shall say this, Mary: you declared his manner

resembled Mattassin's; know, then, that save for the lighter hue of his skin,
Bill-o'-the-Goose is the likeness of his brother in every particular of his
person."

Mary's eyes filled with tears. " 'Sheart, then he is in sooth poor Charley's
brother!" She shook her head. "How clear I see it in his behavior, now I
knovy it to be so! Why, many come up, 'tis Charley and I all over again,
ajfter a fashion!"

Bill-oVthe-Goose, she went on tearfully to say, had not got into his second
gl$ss of rum before Miss Bromly, the Church Creek Virgin, happening to

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 631 ]

pass through the room on her way outdoors from her quarters, encountered
him face to face. Until that moment she had preserved through all their
catcalls and lubricities the iciest demeanor; she was as little given to displays
of emotion as an actual marble sculpture of the Virgin. But by the testi-
mony of every man present in Russecks's tavern, when she beheld the
Indian she drew back, shrieked out some unintelligible name, and tottered
for some moments on the verge of a swoon; yet when a patron made to
assist her she regained her composure as quickly as she had lost it, drove
the would-be Samaritan back by reaching under her cape— where the whole
town knew she carried her famous pistol— and made her exit with a tight-
lipped threat to the company. Bill-o'-the-Goose, like all the others, had
stared after her and was the first to speak when she was gone.

"Bill-o'-the-Goose no longer wishes to be Bill-o'-the-Goose," he had de-
clared. "You tell Bill-o'-the-Goose what ordeals he must brave to be an
English Devil."

These, Mary Mungummory swore, were his very words as reported to her
through the miller Russecks's wife, who in turn had heard them not only
from her -husband but from the wives of all the men present on the occasion.
Despite the chain of communication everyone agreed on the content of his
statement; they remembered it so exactly because Bill-o'-the-Goose had had
difficulty finding an English word for the rigorous initiation rites to which,
in many Indian nations, young men were subjected by their elders as
prerequisites to official manhood in the society— a seasoned trapper present
(not Harvey Russecks) had at length supplied the word orded, to the great
delight of the company when they grasped the Indian's meaning.

"Ye say ye want to become an Englishman?" one of them had asked
gleefully, to make certain of their good fortune.

"Yes."

"An English Devil, ye say?" had asked another.

"Yes."

"And ye want to know what tests a salvage has to pass ere we look on
him as our brother?" demanded the miller.

"Yes."

The men had exchanged glances then and found unanimous design in
one another's eyes. By tacit agreement the miller had proceeded with the
sport.

"Well now," he had said thoughtfully, "first off ye must show yourself a
man o' means; we want no ne'er-do-wells about— not unless they're pretty
as the Virgin, eh, gentlemen?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

The Indian had been unable to follow this speech, but when he was
made to understand that they wished him to show his money he produced
five pounds in assorted English currency — acquired no man knew where—
and a quantity of wompompeag, all of which the overbearing Russecks
had promptly pocketed.

"Now, then, ye must have a proper English name, mustn't he, lads?"

"Yes," Bill-o'-the-Goose had agreed at once. "No more Bill-o'-the-Goose.
English name."

It was short work for the men to change Bill-o'-the-Goose into Billy,
but the problem of a fitting surname required much debate. Some, im-
pressed by the stench of the bear-grease with which their victim was larded
in typical Indian fashion, held out for Billy Goat; others, with his naivet6
in mind, preferred William Goose, despite its potentially Jacobite conno-
tations. While they deliberated, Bill-o'-the-Goose drank down his rum—
with less difficulty than before— and was commanded to take another on
the grounds that a proper subject of Their Majesties should be able to put
away half a rundlet of Barbados without visible ill effect. It was this third
glass, and the comical solemnity with which the Indian, already gripping
the table-edge with one hand to steady himself, had raised it like a cere-
monial grail, that had inspired the miller with a third suggestion.

"He hath the makings of a proper rummy, hath our Bill," he had re-
marked, and added when the Indian gave up just then— in the manner of
all the Aha tch whoops— a raucous, unstifled belch: "Hi, there, he's rumbly
with the spirit already! Old Billy, the Rumbly Rummy!"

And since no man present cared to defend his own preference in the
matter against the miller's, Bill-o'-the-Goose's new English name became—
with appropriateness far profounder than its author guessed— Billy Rumbly,
and was bestowed on him with much blasphemous mumbo-jumbo and a
baptism of cider vinegar*

"Then they shaved off his hair," Mary said, and Ebenezer guessed that
in earlier tellings of the story her voice had been marked by nothing like its
present bitterness; "shaved it off to the scalp, poured another glass o7 rum
in his guts, and told him no civil English gentleman e'er reeked o7 bear-fat.
There was naught for't, they declared, but he must hie himself down to
the creek— in mid-December, mind— strip off his clothes, wade out to his
neck, and swab himself sweet with a horse-brush they provided. 'Twas the
infter's idea, o' course—br-r-r, how I loathe the bully!— and they packed
Bi% pff to crown their pranks, never dreaming they'd see him again; if he
didn't freeze or drown, they reckoned, he'd be shocked fair sober by the
creek and skulk away home/'

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 633 ]

In fact, however, she said, they laughed not half an hour at their wit
before the butt of it reappeared, returned the horse-brush, and called for
more rum: his skin was rubbed raw, but every trace of the bear-grease was
gone— and his liquor as well— and he showed no sign of chill or other
discomfort whatever. While they marveled, Billy pressed them to set him his
next ordeal, and by unhappy coincidence Miss Bromly chose this least
propitious of moments to re-enter the tavern from wherever she had been,
cross the room in disdainful silence, and disappear up the stairway to her
loft. Even so, nothing further might have come of it, precisely because her
appearances invariably captured the whole attention of the patrons; it was
Billy who undid himself by demanding to know whose woman she was.

"Why, Billy Rumbly, that's the Church Creek Virgin," the miller had
answered, still blind to the golden presence of Opportunity. "She's no-
body's woman but her own, is that piece yonder/'

"Now she is Billy Rumbly's woman," the Indian had declared, and had
drawn a knife from his belt. "How doth an English Devil take a wife?
What man must I fight? Where is the Tayac to give her to me?"

Not until then had the men drawn their breath in wonder at the vistas of
new sport that lay before them. They looked at one another more incredu-
lously than the first time and were intimidated by the magnitude of the
lark; almost too overrawed to set it in motion.

Not surprisingly, it was Harry Russecks who had spoken first

"Ye say— ye claim the Church Creek Virgin for your wife?"

At once Billy had moved on him with the knife. "This is your house. Is
she your woman? Do you speak for her?"

"Now, now," the miller had soothed, "put up your knife, Billy Rumbly,
and behave like a decent Englishman, or she'll have naught of ye. So she's
to be Mrs. Billy Rumbly, is she? Well, now!" And after repeating his
earlier assertion, that Miss Bromly had none to answer to but her own
good conscience, Russecks declared his huge satisfaction with the match, a
sentiment echoed by the company to a man.

"But don't ye know, Billy Rumbly," he had continued, "'tis not just
any Englishman deserves a fine lass like the Virgin Bromly yonder. Ye
know the— what-d'ye-call-'em, Sam? Ordeals: that's the rascal!— ye know
the ordeals of an English bridegroom, don't ye, lad?"

As all had hoped, Billy Rumbly confessed his entire ignorance of English
nuptial rites and was enlightened at once by Russecks, who spoke in a
solemn and supremely confidential tone:

"In the first place, ye dare not approach an English virgin with marriage

[634] TEE SOT-WEED FACTOR

in mind till ye have at least a dozen o' drams to fire your passion. They
loathe a sober lover like the pox, do our London lassies! In the second place
ye must say nary a word: one word, mind ye, and your betrothal's at an
end! D'ye follow me, Billy Rumbly? Tis a custom with us English Devils,
don't ye know, to see to't no shitten pup-dogs get our women. No talk,
then; not a word. Ye must come upon her privily, like a hunter on a doe—
f Christ, won't she love ye for't if ye can catch her in ambuscado and take
her maidenhead ere she knows what wight hath climbed her! For there's
the trick, old Billy, old Buck: our laws declare a man must take his bride
as a terrier takes his bitch, will-she, nill-she, and the more she fights and
hollows, the more she honors ye in the rape! Is't not the law o' the land I'm
reading him, friends?"

Now the others had entertained nothing more serious than a prank, so
they all claimed afterwards to their wives; their only thought was to have
some sport with a drunken Indian at the expense of the high-and-mighty
Miss Bromly. 'To give the Church Creek Virgin her comeuppance," as
they put it. Nothing more. But whether because they dared not gainsay
Sir Harry or because his plan, however reprehensible, was altogether too
attractive to resist, they affirmed, with little nods and murmurs, that such
indeed were the customs of the English. As Billy took to himself the
requisite rum, they told themselves and subsequently their wives that a
man with twelve drams of Barbados in his bowels was no more dangerous
than a eunuch to any woman's honor, particularly that of the lady in the
loft; when he had done they made way solemnly for Sir Harry, who with
final hushed injunctions led him reeling to the stairway and watched him
tiptoe up in drunken stealth.

"Many, and to think," groaned Mary, interrupting her narrative, " 'twas
Mattassin's golden likeness they made a fool of! Tis like— oh, God!— 'tis
as if ye made a pisspot o' the Holy Grail!"

"Aye, 'twas a heartless prank," Ebenezer agreed, "but not alone for Bill-
o?-the-Goose! Tis poor Meg Bromly I fear for, and I tremble to think how
my sister Anna comes into it, if she doth at all. Where hath she been while
all this other was afoot?"

"Nearer than ye think," the woman answered grimly.

"Then get on with't," their host suggested, who appeared to be no less
engrossed than was the poet in her story. "I've heard what I've heard, but
there's many a change been rung on the tale of Billy Rumbly these few
days. Gets so a wight collects 'em, like tusk-shells on a string."

4< Twas Roxie Russecks I heard it from," Mary said, "as honest a gossip

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 635 ]

as ever spread the news, and she had it from Sir Harry not five minutes
after it happened. Henrietta heard the shot all the way from the mill and
ran outside to see whence it came— for all Sir Harry wallops her just for
showing her face at the window. But when she saw folks running to her
father's tavern-shop she had perforce to fetch her mother to get the news,
and the Indian was gone in a trail o' blood when Roxie got there . . ."

'The shot!" Ebenezer broke in. "Did you say Miss Bromly shot him?"

Mary raised a fat forefinger. "I said the poor salvage was wounded and
gone, with his own sweet blood to mark his path: that's all I said."

"But who else "

"When Roxie got to the tavern"— she pressed on— "there was blood on
the ground, blood on the gallery, blood all over the floor. The men were
fair sobered, ye may wager, but too shamed to look her in the eye; as for
Harry, that was braying like a jackass at his bloody prank, she could get no
sense from him at all. TChrist, f Christ!' was all he'd say. 'Did ye see the
fool a-hopping and a-croaking like a new-gelt frog?' Then off he'd bray and
say no more."

"Miss Bromly!" Ebenezer demanded. "I must know what happened to
Miss Bromly! Was't she that shot the poor wretch?"

" Twas the Church Creek Virgin, whate'er her name," Mary said tersely.
"The salvage had dragged her as far as the pallet ere she could lay hands
on her pistol, and all the while he mauled her she hollowed 'Henry! Henry!' "

Ebenezer shook his head. " 'Sheart, I don't wonder! Belike she thought
'twas her London tutor in disguise, or gone salvage like Monsieur
Casteene!"

"Whate'er her thoughts, as my Charley was wont to say, she had no mind
to play Lucretia to any man's Tarquin. The truth is, she had reckoned from
the first that if Sir Harry himself did not try for her maidenhead one day
or another, he'd send some drunken lecher to try it for him; hence the
pistol, always charged and ready to fire. Twas in her coat whene'er she set
foot down the stairway, and for the rest, inasmuch as she judged her
honor to be most in peril while she slept and the men caroused below,
she kept it hid beneath her pallet, whence she could snatch it at the first
step on the stairs. The trouble was, even a drunken salvage is still a salvage
to the core; Billy Rumbly crept upstairs with no more noise than a Wiwash
hunter stalking game, and the first she knew of her danger was when he
sprang on her from behind and laid his knife against her throat!"

McEvoy clucked his tongue sympathetically. "How did she manage to
fetch the pistol?"

[636] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"There's the rub oft." Mary smiled. "The walls were broached beyond
defense, and naught was left to her but to open wide the gates, surrender
the castle, and take vengeance against the invader whilst he plundered/'

"Ah God!" cried Ebenezer. "D'you mean the poor girl lost her honor
after all?"

"Not yet, though every man thought so, as I did when I heard the tale
from Roxie, and wondered how Billy Rumbly was not unstarched by the
rum. But ye forget, Mr. Cooke, what we know now: he is Mattassin's
brother, and by your own statement shares my Charley's one defect: he
carries his manhood not under breeches but in his fancy, where rum is
more a virtue than a burthen." Mary shivered again. "Nay, now I think
on't, 'tis all in what ye mean by the word: no brother o' Charley's could
ever take her in the usual way, and belike she hath her maidenhead yet;
but I know well he was at her honor from the first instant, and since she
was obliged to let him fetch her to the pallet, ye may be sure her precious
honor was well tattered by the time she got there. Then, of course, she
snatched out her pistol and aimed to murther him. Howbeit, her shot was
low, from what I gather; it cut him inside the thigh and sent him packing
like a wounded rabbit. E'en then Sir Harry couldn't end his wretched game:
he must chase after poor Billy Rumbly all the way outside and hollow Te
wasn't man enough, damn ye, Bill! Try her again in a fortnight!' "

"But Miss Bromly . . ." said the poet.

"Aye, that's the end o' my tale, till Harvey tells his part oft: when
Roxie finally learned the nature of her husband's prank she flew upstairs
to look after Miss Bromly and found her lying like a lass well-ravished upon
the pallet, with the pistol still a-smoking in her hand. And for all her
erstwhile lordly airs, she ran to Roxie like a child to its mother, weeping
and a-hollowing enough for two, and declared that albeit she was as much
virgin as ever, the salvage had taken a host of liberties with her person,
insomuch that she was like to perish of shame. 'Tis not surprising Roxie
disbelieved her— as did I when I heard oft anon— and said, 'Now, now,
Miss Bromly, what's done is done, and feigning shan't undo it; thou'rt no
virgin now, if in sooth ye were before, but I'm convinced thou'rt no com-
mon trollop either. Come live with me and my daughter at the mill,' she
said, "and we'll soon teach ye how a woman can have sport at no cost
whate'er to her purse, her pride, or her precious reputation.' "

"Ah, Mary," cautioned their host, who must have been reading her lips,
"don't tell tales, now."

Mary replied that Mr, Cooke she knew to be a perfect gentleman, and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 637 ]

since McEvoy knew none of the parties involved, she saw no harm in
quoting Mrs. Russecks's speech. "Ye know full well she's my dearest friend
as well as yours, Harvey, and I love Henrietta like a daughter. These gentle-
men have heard already what a beast Sir Harry is, and can well imagine
what a joy 'twould be to have him for husband or father; 'twere as well
they knew this much more to go with't— that Roxie and Henrietta have
too much spirit and wit by far not to pull the wool o'er the great swine's
eyes at every turn."

The trapper was still not entirely pacified, but Ebenezer, though the
mixed metaphor made him wince, acknowledged the unknown women's
right to their peccadilloes, in order to bring Mary back to her story.

"Aye, Miss Bromly"— Mary sighed— "that Roxie tells me I might per-
suade now to learn my trade."

Understandably sensitive in the matter of outraged innocence, Ebenezer
could not restrain his bitterness. "Is that your notion of a grand and charita-
ble woman, that takes a poor girl in to make a whore of her? Unhappy
Miss Bromly! Methinks your Mrs. Russecks is no better than her husbandr

"Gently, gently, Mr. Cooke," Mary said calmly. "Ye forget 'tis not to
Sir Harry's mill I'm bound to fetch her, but to the house of her English
husband, Mr. Rumbly . . ."

"1'God!"

"Let me finish, now. The girl was that distracted by her rape or whate'er
ye choose to call it, she commenced to shriek and gibber like a bedlamite.
Her name was not Meg Bromly at all, she declared, but Anna Cooke o'
Cooke' s Point7 the sister o' the Laureate Poet, and the salvage that attacked
her was no salvage at all, but her childhood tutor "

"Marry, I see it now!" cried the poet. "She hath been Anna's friend and
mine since we were children inPlumtree Street; some business hath brought
her to Maryland, and she had planned to call on me at Maiden until she
heard of my disgrace and my father's wrath. Aye, 'tis clear! The poor girl
durst not go near the infamous place, but took lodgings in Church Creek
while she made enquiries about me. Tfaith, another lost soul upon my
conscience! Poor, poor Miss Bromly; how Anna would fly to aid you if she
knew!"

As a matter of fact, Ebenezer's feelings were mixed: he was unspeakably
relieved to think that the ravished Church Creek Virgin had not been his
sister but concerned at the same time, not only because it had been his
sister's friend but also because this fact rendered Anna as lost as ever. Now
he blanched, for a new thought struck him.

[638] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Nay, 'tis worse yet! Why would Miss Bromly be in Maryland at all, if
not as Anna's companion? Aye, 'sheart, I should have seen it from the first!
They traveled together—what could be more likely?— and when they heard
how things fared at Maiden, or when my father caught up with Anna and
made her stay with him, Miss Bromly took it upon herself to seek me out—
that's it, I'm certain: either Joan Toast made no mention of me, or they
disbelieved her! 'Sheart, 'sheart, miserable girl! How many more will be
brought low on my account? And now, whether 'tis that she seeks pity by
desperate subterfuge or that the shock of rape hath deranged her,, she calls
herself by her best friend's name, and thinks 'tis Henry Burlingame hath
undone her!"

"Tis a fact she sometimes calls her husband Henry? Mary allowed.
"Roxie said as much."

"Stay, now," McEvoy said. "Ye left the wench in her loft-room, a-bab-
bling to the Russecks woman, and now she's wife to the wight that leaped
her, and that she pistoled! Ye've o'erskipped some prime piece o' the tale,
kss, have ye not?"

"That I have, sir," Mary nodded, "for 'tis Harvey's piece to tell. When
the girl had done a-gibbering she fell aswoon in Roxie's arms and was
fetched senseless to share Henrietta's chamber in the millhouse. For three
days Roxie nursed her like an ailing child, and on the fourth she disap-
peared. No man hath laid eyes on her from that day to this save Harvey
here . . "

11 : THE TALE OF BILLY RUMBLY IS CONCLUDED BY
AN EYE-WITNESS TO HIS ENGLISHING. MARY
MUNGUMMORY POSES THE QUESTION, DOES
ESSENTIAL SAVAGERY LURK BENEATH THE SKIN OF
CIVILIZATION, OR DOES ESSENTIAL CIVILIZATION
LURK BENEATH THE SKIN OF SAVAGERY?-BUT DOES
NOT ANSWER IT

MARY FINISHED SPEAKING AND LOOKED EXPECTANTLY AT HARVEY RUS-

secks, as did Ebenezer and John McEvoy. But because her last remark had
been delivered in a voice lower than that with which she had told the story

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 639 ]

and had been directed specifically to McEvoy, the trapper missed it and
smiled vacantly back at them.

"Tell 'em, Harvey," she prompted. "What happened whilst the Church
Creek Virgin was a-swoon at Roxie's, and the rest of it?"

"Aye, that's true, that's true," Harvey laughed, not yet conceiving exactly
what she said. Ebenezer concluded that the older man's mind must have
been wandering, for he had caught up the earlier remark about Mrs.
Russecks at once. " Twas when I went out on the trap line in the morning
—ice all over the marsh, don't ye know, and muskrats frozen in the snares
—I spied a campfire down the line and walked over to't to thaw my finger-
joints, and there lay this salvage with the bloody breeches, his head shaved
most unnaturally, and his body cold as death. Twas my first thought he
was dead o' the cold or the loss o' blood, and another two hours had proved
me right; but I felt some life in his veins beat yet and resolved to fetch him
here and do what I could for him. The wound I found no great matter, for
all the blood; whoe'er had shot him— I'd heard naught o* his story then,
don't ye know— whoever shot him had missed the great vein and only cut
through the flesh and skin. I washed and bound it, and forced some hot
broth on the fellow directly he could open his mouth, and, b'm'faith, what
a stout wretch he proved! As nigh as the very latch-string to death's doorway,
and an hour later he had his senses again, if not his strength. When I'd won
his trust he told me his tale as best he grasped it, and inasmuch as I'd
heard o' the Church Creek Virgin and knew my brother's humor besides,
it wanted small philosophy to guess the rest.

"I told him he'd been the butt .of a vicious prank (the which he saw
plainly when I explained it) and offered to ask for the five pounds sterling
Harry had robbed him of; he thanked me kindly, in the plainest English
I e'er heard salvage speak, and declared the whole oft was mine for rescuing
him, if I could get it. Now ye dare not refuse a salvage's gift, lest he think
thou'rt insulting him, and so I dedared I'd take two shillings for my trouble
and deliver the rest to him. All the while we spoke he had been casting
his eyes about the room, and anon he asked me, Would I sell him my
house? and Would five pounds purchase it? I replied 'twas not worth it by
half, but I'd no mind to sell, and as he showed such eagerness to live in an
English cabin I told him of an old one I owned near Tobacco Stick Bay,
not far from Church Creek, that was falling to ruin for lack o' tenants, and
declared he could live in't without rent if he'd trouble himself to repair it.
Ye might think that an odd piece o' charity on such short acquaintance,
but this half-breed had an air about him— I've not the words for't, sirs.

[6.AO] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Twas as if ... d'ye know those stories o' kings and princes that prowl the
streets in Scotch cloth? Or better, the tales of Old Nick posing as a mortal
man to bargain for souls? The while we talked I half expected to smell
brimstone in the air, and when he took off his moccasins to warm his feet
on the hob, 'twas almost a surprise to see he had toes like yours and mine,
and not cloven hoofs! He was uncommon quick in his mind, was this
salvage, and gave me to feel that had he been reared English from the
cradle he'd have been another Cromwell, or what ye will. Tis no mystery
to me Miss Bromly took him for her tutor in disguise; with a fortnight's
practice lie could pass for a don of Oxford, I am sure oft, and two years
hence for a sunburnt Aristotle! There's many a man I have no use for,
gentlemen, and it struck me from the first this salvage would play me false
if need be, to gain his ends; but he had that power of attraction— how doth
a man speak of it? Will-ye, nill-ye, ye felt that if his purposes and yours
weren't one, ye had your own shortsightedness to blame for't, and if he
sold ye short, 'twas that your stuff was the stuff o' pawns and not o' heroes—
to this hour he hath done me no injury, but that day I was driven to forgive
him in advance, in my heart, for aught he might do mel"

"Ah," Ebenezer said.

"In any case, he slept here that night, and albeit I'd reckoned his wound
would be some days a-mending, next morning I found him gone. My
first thought was, he had set out to revenge himself on my brother — "
The trapper blushed, but his eyes narrowed. "God forgive me or condemn
me, as't please Him: I made no move at all to warn Harry of his danger,
but went out to my line o' traps as usual. There was a heavy frost that
morning, I remember, and over by Raccoon Creek, on a stretch o' high
ground betwixt the fresh marsh and the salt marsh, I commenced to see
bear tracks in the frost along the path, and even a bear stool so fresh 'twas
not e'en froze, but lay a-steaming in the path. Not long after, near the
end o' the line, I saw moccasin-prints in with the bear tracks, and inasmuch
as they were not half an hour old, I took the trouble to follow 'em out,
just to see what fortune the salvage might have: 'twas late in the year for
bears to be about.

"Anon the trail led me to a little stand o' hardwoods, and I could hear
Mr. Bear a-grumbling up ahead. By's track he was no giant, nor yet a baby
either, but I had no weapon on me save my skinning-knife, and so I crept
toward the sound as quietly as I could manage. 'Twas no great trick to find
bto, he was growling so; I came on a little clearing and there he was, a
fat black rascal that hadn't bedded down for the winter. He was a male, not

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 641 ]

quite full-grown— on his hind legs he would've stood as high as your shoulder
—and he was worrying a rotten piece o' log to get the grubs on't. I'd
just commenced to wonder where the salvage had got to, when a hand
came down on my shoulder, and there stood Billy Rumbly himself, looking
wise and cheerful as ye please. He led me farther down wind and out of
earshot and told me he meant to kill the bear unless I laid a claim on't.

" 'Why, Billy/ says I, * 'tis not likely I'll take on a bear with a skmning-
knife so long as I'm sane and sober, and I'd urge no fellow man to try
such tricks.' For I saw he had no weapons on him save his two bare hands.
But he only smiled and declared he'd show me a trick he'd learnt from
some western salvages, that were said to use it as a test o* courage when
two men quarreled o'er some woman's favors. I judged 'twould be worth
the danger o' watching, nor was I mistaken— nay, i'Christ, 'twas the oddest
piece o' hunting I e'er shall behold in my life!

"The first thing he did was find two straight saplings, one no thicker
than your thumb and the other twice as thick, and snapped 'em off low
in a certain way so that the break was a hand's-breath long. I offered him
my knife to point 'em, albeit 'tis no. tool for whittling, but he declared
'twas a breach o' the rules to use a knife or any weapon thrown from the
hands, and made the best oft by peeling back splinters from the break.
One sapling he made a rough spear from by stripping off the branches,
.and the other he broke off short for a kind of dagger; then we crept
to the clearing, where Mr. Bear was scratching his back against a tree,
and for all the frost had scarce commenced to melt, Billy fetched off all
his clothes, picked up his sticks, and stepped out into the clearing dressed
in naught but the rag-strip bandage on his thigh."

The two men marveled, and Ebenezer observed that Mary had set her
jaw and closed her eyes.

"The bear left off scratching and watched him make some salvage sort
o' prayer. But when Billy moved toward him he ambled off round the
edge of the clearing. Billy set out at a run, hollowing some gibberish or
other, but instead o' turning on him or running off down the path, the
bear made for a stout young oak near the middle o' the clearing and com-
menced to climb. I stepped out and called 'Bad luck, Billy,' for I never
doubted the chase was done; but the bear was scarce off the ground ere
Billy was climbing after him, pole in his hand and dagger 'twixt his teeth,
and never a care how the rough bark flayed him as he climbed! At the
first branches, twice your height off the ground, the bear stopped to look
down, and grumbled and waved his forepaw. Billy shinnied up close and

[ 642 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

poked as best as he could without a proper purchase, but he got no more
for his pains than louder growl. I offered to fetch him a longer pole, and
learned 'twas a breach o' his murtherous rules to take help from any wight
soever or change weapons once ye've touched the bear— I'll own I felt
then, and feel yet^ he was hatching these customs as he went along, but
fact or figment, he followed 'em like Holy Orders.

"In lieu of changing weapons, he changed his plan o' battle and com-
menced to jab at the bear's face, taking care the monster didn't catch
the pole in his teeth or strike it out o' his hand. I guessed 'twas his object
to drive the bear farther up the trunk and gain the branches for himself,
where he could do more damage with his spear, but instead the animal
moved around the trunk to protect his face, and hung his great hindquar-
ters right over Billy's head. Yet so far from giving o'er the bout or scram-
bling away ere the great brute struck him, Billy seemed as pleased as if
'twas fust what he'd designed: he gave a whoop and thrust his pole as far
as ever, where I need not mention! The bear gave a squeal and tried to
get at the spear with his forepaws, but Billy thrust deeper; he climbed a
little distance up the trunk and was undone the more by slipping back,
and at length he fell, with such a hollowing as ye never heard. In that
same instant Billy was on him; he drove the short stake in his throat and
sprang away ere I myself had grasped the fact that the bear was down.

"By the time I found a tree o' my own to hide behind, the bear was on
his feet and thrashing after the pole, that still stuck out behind. All the
while, Billy stood empty-handed in plain view, not three yards off, and
goaded the bear to attack him; when he did, Billy led him five times round
the oak tree, and the poor brute fell down dead."

^Many!" said McEvoy. " Tis as brave a trick as I've heard of I"

"^?d.as g0ry'" Ebenezer added> speaking loudly for the trapper's bene-
fit. "Tis a wondrous tale, Mr. Russecks, and yet— you must pardon my
rudeness— I cannot but wonder what this feat hath to do with my poor
dishonored friend Miss Bromly."

"Nay, friend, there's naught to pardon/' Harvey replied. "I wondered
the same myself, the while I watched, why it was he had set out half
mended to match his strength with a bear's, when all the evening past he
had talked o' naught save the laws and customs o' the English. He had
been that eager and quick a scholar, ye'd have thought he was training
for a place in Court-but look at him now, astride o' his kill to drink the
hot blood ere the brute's fair dead! TTie very type and essence of the sal-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 643 ]

vage! But I had not long to wonder, nor shall you, sir, if ye'll but hold
with me.

"When Billy had drunk his fill he went to the creek and washed his
body from toe to toe, for albeit the bear had not so much as scratched
him, the tree-bark had cut him as raw as a keelhauled sailor, and he was
dirty and all a-sweat besides. E'en now the rules he'd set himself were in
force; he would have none o' my skinning-knife, but commenced to flay
the carcass with an oystershell from the creek, and albeit he allowed
me to make a fire, he stayed naked as Adam till his work was done. 'Twere
a half-day's labor to flay out such a beast with a wretched shell, and I feared
he'd catch his death ere the chore was done; but he made me a gift o'
both hide and meat, declaring he craved nor the one nor the other, and
flayed no more o' the carcass than was required to lay back a deal o' fat.
This he gouged by the gobbet onto a foot-square piece o' the pelt, the
which he had reserved for himself, and then skewered o'er the fire till it
commenced to render. His object, as I saw at once, was to lard himself
with bear-grease from heel to hair, as is the wont of many salvages from
time to time, and as he worked I began to fear that betwixt this bear-hunt
and the happenings of the day before, there was a certain dark connection.
Nor was I wide o' the mark, for when he was greased as a griskin and reeking
like Old Ned's lamp, he gorged himself on the balance o' the fat and then

took up his oystershell once more and gelded the bear "

Ebenezer and McEvoy expressed their bewilderment and shock, but Mary,
who had been so withdrawn throughout that one wondered whether she
was entranced or asleep, now opened her eyes and sighed a knowing, com-
passionate sigh. " Twas what I expected, and less than I hoped for, Harry.
And Roxie is mistaken— 'twere a waste o' time for me to see her, don't
ye think? Ah well, in any case the story's clear."

"Haply 'tis clear to you," complained the poet, "but I grasp naught oft."
" Tis no deep mystery," the trapper declared. "What the bull hath always
signed to civil folk, the male bear signifies to the salvage Indian. But not
only do they look on him as the emblem o' virility; they hold farther that
his carcass is great medicine in matters o' love. Hence the manner of his
killing, that Billy had explained before, and hence that larding with his
hibernation-fat, the which they say feeds the fires o' love as it warms the
bear in winter months. As for the other, 'tis widely believed in the salvage
nations that if a man lay hold of a buck-bear's privates, bind 'em up in a
pouch o' the uncured pelt, and belt 'em so with a bearhide thong that they
hang before his own, then his potency will be multiplied by the bear'%

[644] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and Heav'n help the first poor wench that crosses his path! I asked him,
'Is't the Church Creek girl thou'rt bound for?' And albeit he would not
answer me directly, he smiled a dev'lish smile and said 'twould please him
no end if I'd pay him a call some day or two hence, when he and Mrs.
Rumbly had found my cabin on Tobacco Stick Bay and set up house-
keeping! By's speech ye'd take him for a merry English gentleman; yet
there he stood like the living spirit o' salvage lust! Much as I feared for
the poor girl's honor, I pled with Billy Rumbly to move with caution, in-
asmuch as I supposed she'd be on her guard to shoot him dead. But he
said, 'No English pistol e'er killed a bear,' and went his way."

"Now 'tis plain," McEvoy said. "He carried her off and keeps her hid
in the cabin ye spoke of! How is't the sheriff hath made no move to find
her?"

"Tis also plain thou'rt innocent of provincial justice," Ebenezer put
in bitterly. "Only the virtuous run afoul of the law in Maryland."

"Nay, now, ye put your case too strongly," said the trapper. "We've
laws enough in the statute-books, and just ones, and our courts are as
sound as England's are, in principle; but 'tis a wild and lawless bailiwick
they deal with— frauds and pirates and whores and adventurers, jailbirds
and the spawn o' jailbirds— and what's worse, as yet there's no real power
behind the law. No right without might, as folks say. I don't wonder the
courts go wrong, or a judge or two sells justice o'er the bar; at least the
judges and courts are there, and we'll make tfieir judgments honest when
we've the power to make 'em stick— which is to say, when the spirit o'
the folk at large is curbed and snaffled."

Ebenezer's cheeks tingled, and not alone because he felt that he had
in fact overstated his indictment with a fervid, adolescent sort of right-
eousness: his day in the Cambridge court still rankled in his memory,
and the price of it drew a sweat from all his pores; but his wholesale rancor
had got to be something of a disposition, and he had been alarmed to
recognize, as the trapper spoke, that he fell into it of late, on mention
of certain subjects, more from habit than from honest wrath. So grossly had
Maryland used him, he had vowed to smirch her name in verse to his
children's children's children; could such outrages dwindle to the like of
actors' cues? It was by no progress of reason that he reached this question,
but by a kind of insight that glowed in his mind as the blood glowed in
his face. By its troubled light; in no more time than was required for him
to murmur, "I daresay" to Harvey Russecks, he beheld the homeless ghosts
of a thousand joys and sorrows meant to live in the public heart till the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 645 ]

end of time: feast days, fast days, monuments, and rites, all dedicated to
glories and disasters of a magnitude that dwarfed his own, and all forgotten,
or rotely observed by a gentry numb to the emotions that established them.
A disquieting vision indeed, and no less disquieting to the poet was his
response to it. Not long since, he would have gnashed his spiritual teeth
at the futility of endeavor in such a cosmos. Not improbably he would
have railed at human fickleness in allegorical couplets: the Heart, he would
have declared, is a faithless Widow: at the deathbed of her noble Spouse
(whether Triumph or Tragedy) she pledges herself forever to his mem-
ory, but scarcely has she donned her Weeds before some importuning
Problem has his way with her; and in the years that follow, for all her
ceremonious visits to the tomb, she throws open her chamber door and
shares her bed with a parade of mean Vicissitudes, not one of them worthy
even of her notice. Now, however, though such fickleness still stung his
sensibilities (which is to say his vanity, since he identified himself with the
late Husband) , he was not sure but what it had about it a double tightness:
"Time passes for the living," it seemed to say, "and alters things. Only
for the dead do circumstances never change." And this observation implied
a judgment on the past, its relation to and importance in the present; a
judgment to which he currently half assented— but only half I

The trapper resumed. " Twas just a few days later I saw Billy again,
coming out of Trinity Church— aye, I swear't, just a Sunday since! He was
knee-hosed and periwigged like any English gentleman, not a trace o' bear-
grease on him, and for all some folk misdoubted what to make of him,
the rector and he shook ha'nds at the door and spoke their little pleasantries
as cordial as ye pleasel When I drew nigh I heard him chatting with a
brace o' sot-weed planters in better English periods than yell hear in the
Governor's Council; ye'd have thought him a sunburnt Thomas Lawrence,
I declare! His companions were two of the same that had tricked him
before, but ye'd ne'er have guessed it from their manner: the one was
inviting him to join the church, and the other was arguing with him about
next year's sot-weed market.

" 'This here's Mr. Rumbly,' they said to me, 'as decent a Christian gentle-
man as ever shat on sot-weed/ At sight o' me Billy smiled and bowed,
and said, 'I've already had the honor, thankee, gentlemen: Mr. Russecks
was generous enough to lend me one of his cabins against the day I raise
a house of my own.' We twain shook hands most warmly, and, do ye know,
I was the envy of no fewer than half a dozen souls round about, so jealous
were they grown already of his favorl Billy declared he had a^ call or two

[646] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

to pay, after which he wished I'd take dinner at his cabin, and when he'd
strolled off, his courtiers gathered round me like fops round a new-dubbed
knight. From them I learned that the Church Creek Virgin had set out
one day from Roxanne's house and disappeared, nor was heard from after
till the day Billy Rumbly came to town, dressed in his English clothes,
and declared she was his bride. Some said he had made a prisoner of her,
and told stories of seeing him torture her over the hearth fire and what
all, but others that had spied on him too declared she could leave the
cabin whene'er she pleased and stayed with him of her own will. To them
that took the liberty of calling for a proper Christian wedding, he replied
that naught would please him more, but his wife was content with the
Indian ceremony he had performed himself and would have no other, nor
would he oblige her against her will.

"In any case, albeit 'twas but a short time since that first appearance,
and there was still some talk against him here and there, Billy seemed
to have won the heart of every woman in Church Creek and the respect
of nearly all the men. His dress and manner were more English than
the Governor's, and with the foreign cast of his skin and speech they made
him seem like some potentate in mufti: a prince o' Persia, don't ye know,
on tour o' the English provinces. He hath great plans for improving every-
thing from the sot-weed market to the penal code, as I hear't, and albeit
no man would speak out and say't— me being a Russecks, ye know— 'twas
clear they looked to Billy to stand up to my brother Harry soon or late.
They have changed allegiance well-nigh to a man; Bill/s too strong and
full o' plans, and Sir Harry's too jealous of his power, for the twain not
to come to grips. What's more, rumor hath it 'twas Harry drove Miss Bromly
to run off, from trying to have his way with her— as I can well believe
he'd do, though 'twere in Roxanne's very presence—and everyone reasoned
Billy would have satisfaction of the wretch when the right time came,

"On our way to the cabin~I forgot to tell ye I was the first wight
he'd invited into his house and was envied the more fort— on the way
out there I told Billy frankly what I'd heard of him and asked him to sort
out fact from fancy, but he was so full of his own questions about every-
thing under the sun, he made me no proper answer. Why could not the
tobacco planters form a guild, he wanted to know, to bargain with the
Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations? Who was Palestrina, and
did I think a man of forty was too old to learn the harpsichord? Why did
Copernicus suppose the sun stood still, when it and its planets might be
moving together through space? If a sincere Christian ascetic comes to take

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 647 ]

true pleasure in mortifying the appetites, must he not then gratify them
in order to mortify them, and mortify them in order to gratify them, and
did this not fetch him to an impasse?"

"1'Christ!" laughed McEvoy. " Tis I he'd fetch to an impasse with those
enquiries! I'd fetch him a rap on the skull!"

Mary Mungummory shook her head. "So much like my blessed Charley,
rest his soul! Had the De'il's own packsack o' questions, and no man's
answers pleased him!"

Ebenezer pressed the trapper for tidings of Miss Bromly: had the Indian
carried her off by main strength to work his cruel pleasures on her? " Tis
e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from
the lion! Innocence is like youth," he declared sadly, "which is vouchsafed
us only to expend and takes its very meaning from its loss."

44 'Tis just that makes it precious, is't not?" asked McEvoy with a smile.

"Nay," Mary countered, " 'tis just that proves its vanity, to my way o'
thinking."

" 'Tis beyond me what it proves," Ebenezer said. "I know only that
the case is so."

Russecks then went on to say that he had found the cabin (which already
he had ceased to think of as his own) in excellent repair, its windows
newly equipped with real glass panes and the grounds around it scrupulously
clear of brush. In the dooryard stood a newly constructed sundial, perhaps
the only one in the area, and atop one gable was a platform used by its
builder for readier observation of the stars and planets.

"He'd mentioned along the way that he'd shot a young buck the night
before and was waiting till Monday, like a proper Christian, to butcher
it, but when we rode around the cabin I spied a salvage woman up to her
elbows in the bloody carcass, cleaving off steaks and rump-roasts. She was
dressed in dirty deerskin like the old squaws wear; her hair was coarse and
tangled, and her brown skin greasy as a bacon-flitch. Her back was turned
to us as we rode in, and she paid us no heed at all. 'Twas on my mind to
twit Billy for her industry— tell him 'twas a merry bit o' Jesuitry, don't ye
know, setting heathens to break the Sabbath for him— but ere ever I got
the words out he addressed her in the salvage tongue, and I saw when
she faced round 'twas no Indian woman at all. I could only gather, she
was the famous Church Creek Virgin!"

Ebenezer and McEvoy registered their astonishment.

"I'faith, sirs," Russecks proceeded, "it doth give a civil man pause when

t 648 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

first he lays eyes upon a salvage, fort carries him back to view the low
origin of his history, as't were; yet by how much rarer is the spectacle of
one of his own kind fallen back to the salvage condition, by so much
more confounding is't to behold, for it must drive home to him how strait
and treacherous is his people's climb to politeness and refinement— so much
so, that one breath of inattention, as't were, may send the climber a-plum-
met to his former state. This thing we call civilization — 'tis an island, is't
not? Or say 'tis a bumboat-load o' judges, dons, and poets, on a dark and
vasty main o'erwracked with storms. And in the civillest among us, don't
ye know—in Mister Cooke the poet there, or who ye will— this precious
cultivation — 'sheart, sirs, on sight of one like Billy Rumbly's wife ... I"
He paused and started over. 'What I mean, sirs, this cultivation of our
minds and souls is like the cultivation of our fields, so't seems to me: 'tis
all order and purpose— and wondrous fruits doth it bring forth!— yet 'tis
but a scratch, is't not; on the face of unplumbable deeps? Two turns o*
the spade cuts through't to the untouched earth, and under that lies a
thousand miles o' changeless rock, and deeper yet lie the raging hell-fires
at the core o' the world!

"The sensible man, I say, is bound to reflect on these things when he
sees one of his own gone salvage like the Church Creek Virgin. She was
dressed in Indian garb, as I said before, and was pig-dirty from head to
foot. She'd browned her skin with dye, so't appeared, and basted it well
with bear-fat, which with the dirt and deer-blood gave her a splendid
salvage stink, e'en in the cold out-o'-doors. Never a glance did she cast
to me, but stared always at Billy like a good retriever, and at his command
she gave o'er hacking the buck and plodded off with two steaks to broil
for dinner."

The interior of the cabin, Russecks went on to say, he had found as
clean as the housekeeper was not, who in the heat from the fireplace grew
redolent as a tan yard; throughout the afternoon, when dinner was done,
she had sat stolidly on the hearthrug, Indian fashion, grinding meal in an
earthenware mortar, and had spoken only in grunts and monosyllables when
Billy addressed her; yet though her manner and condition were slavelike,
at 'no time had the trapper observed anything suggestive of coercion or
intimidation.

"In sum," he said, "she was an English lass no longer, but a simple
salvage squaw. 'Tis my best guess he sought her out in his bear-grease
and magical loin-pouch and did such deeds o' salvage love and ravishment

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 649 ]

that she gave o'er the reins of her mind for good and all— as I've heard
many women have done that were set upon by a band o' pirates or barb'-
rous soldiers "

"Nay, thou'rt oft the mark/' Mary said flatly. " Tis that he made such
a conquest with his amorous lore, the girl renounced her Englishness on
the spot for ever and aye. I'd wager my life 'tis thus; I know 'tis thus."

No one questioned her.

"Ah, but I loathe the monster nonetheless!" Ebenezer said. "E'en grant-
ing our innocence was given us to lose, still and all— nay, rather therefore
—its whole meaning is in the terms of its surrender, is't not? To have
it wrested will-ye, nill-ye, ravished away " He tried to envision the strug-
gle: he was in the position of Miss Bromly, forced rudely upon her back
among the cold briars of the forest; the knife was at his neck, his coats
were flung high, the wind bit his thighs and private parts; and over him,
naked and greased, hung a swart, ferocious savage with the face and her-
petonic eyes of Henry Burlingame. "God damn him for'tl How the wretch
must gloat in his victory!"

"How's that?" Russecks showed some surprise at such vehemence and
seemed to doubt whether he had heard correctly. "Gloat, ye say? Ah, well,
now, he didn't gloat, ye know* Nay, friend, ye forget Billy Rumbly hath
climbed a far greater distance than the lass hath sunk; aye, e'en higher
by far than the station she left, I'll wager! Such a civil, proper gentleman
as he could ne'er take pleasure in such a victory, not though his life hung
on't; yet 'twas the conquest, as I see't, that raised him up. The fact is, sirs,
his wife is a constant shame to him: he entreats her to clean herself and
dress like an English lady; he yearns to join the Church and have a Christian
wedding; naught would please him more than to set sail tonight for Rome,
or an English university. But she will none oft; she wallows in her filth
and salvage ways, and poor Billy is too much the man of honor now
either to desert her or to force her against her will!"

Mary Mungummory shook her head, "How well I know her heart and
his as well! I wonder again what oft and oft I wonder as I watch the nightly
circus in my wagon: is man a salvage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile
Manners? Or is salvagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility,
which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?"

For Ebenezer, at least, absorbed in recollection of certain violences in
his past, the question was by no means without pertinence and interest;
as before, however, neither he nor the other men ventured a response.

12: THE TRAVELERS HAVING PROCEEDED
NORTHWARD TO CHURCH CREEK, MCEVOY
OUT-NOBLES A NOBLEMAN, AND THE POET FINDS
HIMSELF KNIGHTED WILLY-NILLY

SOON AFTER HARVEY RUSSECKS HAD CONCLUDED HIS STORY THE COMPANY

retired for the night on clean corn-husk mattresses provided by the host,
which, with a plentiful supply of good blankets from Mary's wagon, afforded
Ebenezer and McEvoy the most comfortable night's lodging they had
enjoyed for some time. The poet, however, was kept sleepless for hours
by thoughts of his sister, the gravity of his mission, and the most unusual
story he had just heard. Next morning as they breakfasted on platters of
fried eggs and muskrat— a dish they found more pleasing to the tongue
than to the eye— he declared, "I had cause enough before to find this
Cohunkowprets, or Billy Rumbly, for he may be the means of sparing
my conscience the burthen of two English lives; but now I've heard what
state Miss Bromly hath fallen to, purely out of loyalty to my sister, 'tis
more urgent than ever I seek the fellow out and try to save her. One
ruined life the more on my account, and I'll go mad with responsibility!"
"Nay, friend," McEvoy urged, "I respect your sentiments, Heav'n knows,
but think better of tl Thou'rt bound to save our hostages from Chicamec
at any cost to yourself, so ye declared, and ye've shamed me into the
same tomfoolish honor.: d'ye think this Rumbly fellow's likely to oblige
us if he sees thou'rt after wooing his wife away? And if he turns his back
on us-i'faithl-'twill not be two, but two hundred thousand lives ye
may answer for; with Dick Parker and that other wight to general 'em,
not all the militia in America can put down the slaves and Indians!"

"I tremble to think oft," said Mary Mungummory from her station
at the cook-fire. "Don't forget, Mr. Cooke, whate'er foul play brought
the girl to her present pass, 'tis of her own free will she stays there," Sud-
denly she gave an irritated sigh and called on an imaginary tribunal to
witness the poet's wrongheadedness. "Marry, sirs, the world's about to ex-
plode, and he concerns himself with one poor slut's misfortunes!"

Ebenezer smiled. "Who's to say which end of the glass is the right to
look through? One night when Burlingame and I were watching the stars

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 651 ]

from St. Giles in the Fields, I remarked that men's problems, like earth's
mountains, amounted to naught from the aspect of eternity and the bound-
less heavens; and Henry answered, 'Quite so, Eben: but down here where
we live they are mountainous enough, and no mistake!' In any case, I
mean to do what I can for Miss Bromly. I've no mind to prosecute Billy
Rumbly for rape— 'twere a vain ambition in a Maryland court!— and he'll
not object to my solicitude, if I have his case aright from Mr. Russecks."

It was still early when they bade the trapper good-bye and set out in
Mary's wagon for Church Creek, some fifteen or twenty miles northward
out of the marshes; though the journey took five hours or more, the sun
was scarcely past the meridian when they arrived at the little settlement.

"Yonder's an inn," McEvoy said; he indicated a neat frame structure
some distance ahead.

"Aye, there we'll go, like it or not/' Mary said, "'tis Sir Harry's place."
She explained that Harry Russecks, the trapper's notorious brother, flew into
a dangerous temper when visitors to the town failed to appear before him
and state their business. "He knows mine well enough, and ye twain need
say no more than that I'm ferrying ye to Cambridge on business for the
Governor/'

"I say, he is a high-handed rascall" Ebenezer cried. "What right hath
he to pry into everyone's affairs?"

"Ah, well," Maty replied, "for one thing, he can carry five hundredweight
o' grain upon his back, so they say, and break a man's neck as ye'd break
a barleystraw. For another, he owns the inn, the mill over yonder on the
creek, and half the planters hereabouts." The mill, she went on to say,
like most mills in the Province, had been built originally at Lord Baltimore's
order and financed in part with funds from the provincial treasury; hence
the government maintained an official interest in its operation. Harry Rus-
secks was certainly aware of this fact, but St. Mary's City being so far re-
moved from Church Creek, and the Governor's Council having so many
pressing problems to engage its attention and such feeble machinery of
law enforcement, he did not scruple to exploit his monopoly in every way.
What with charging extortionate fees for grinding, and regularly purloin-
ing a capful of grain out of each bushel, he had early become a man of
some means; subsequently he had built the inn and taken to making loans
on acreage collateral to the tobacco-planters in the area so that, regardless
of the market, he made large profits every year. If the tobacco price per
hogshead was good, his loans were repaid with interest, his milling fees
went up, and his tavern was filled with celebrating planters; if the market

[ 652 ] THE SQT-WEED FACTOR

i

fell, he increased his landholdings with forfeited collateral, ground grain
as always for his neighbors' daily bread, and sold the planters rum to
drown their sorrows in. It was not surprising, then, that he was presently
the wealthiest man in the area and certainly one of the wealthiest in
the Province: such was the power of his position in Church Creek that
he had secured to be his wife the only truly noble lady for miles around,
by what unscrupulous arrangements the townsfolk could only conjecture;
one and all were obliged to address him by his false title even as he robbed
them at the mill, to leap clear whenever he brandished the sword which
he affected, even at the grindstones, as an emblem of his rank, and in
general to submit without protest to his arrogance and poltroonery.

"Sir Harry respects naught in the world save patents o' nobility," she con-
cluded, "nor fears any man in the Province— save a brace o' commissioners
from St. Mary's, that some folk think have been dispatched to inspect the
mills and ferries."

"I'Christ, then!" McEvoy exclaimed. "I don't wonder they look to Billy
Rumbly for relief! Yd like to see the blackguard tomahawked myself, that
have yet to lay eyes upon him!"

Drawing up before the inn they saw upon its sign a curious armorial
device in bold colors: on a field azure, between flanches sable with annulets
or (or roundlets square-pierced to look like millstones), a fleur-de-lis gules
beset from alow and aloft by hard crabs armed natural. Their examination
of it was cut short by a great commotion within the place it advertised:
there was a crash of fallen crockery, a woman shrieked, "Ow! Owl" a man's
voice cried, and another roared out "I'll crack thy sniveling skull, John
Hanker! Arrahl Hold still, dammee, whilst I fetch ye a good one!" From
the door burst a young colonial, clutching his bare head in both hands
and running for his life. At hi$ heels pumped a shaggy bull of a man, black-
haired, open-shirted, squint-eyed and mottled with rage; in his right hand
he waved a swotd (no gentlemen's rapier, but a Henry Morgan cutlass
fit to quarter oxen with) and in his left he clutched by the arm a distraught
young woman-the same, they soon heard, whose shriek had announced
the scene. Had his pursuer not been thus encumbered, the young man
would almost surely have lost more than just his periwig; even with this
handicap the wild-haired swordsman— whom Ebenezer immediately under-
stood to be the miller Russecks himself-came within an ace of adding
homicide to the catalogue of his sins.

"Yafc/ Run, Hanker!" he bellowed, giving over his pursuit. "Come to
Church Creek again, I grind ye to hogswill!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [653]

"Twas only in sport, Father!" cried the girl. "Prithee don't go on so!"
Now that the crisis was past she seemed more embarrassed than alarmed.

" 'Sheart!" McEvoy murmured to Ebenezer. "There's a handsome lass!"

The miller turned on her, still brandishing his sword. "I know thy lewd
sports! D'ye think I didn't see where he laid his drunken paw, and you
smiling him farther? All dogs pant after the salt bitch, eh? Well, dammee
if I don't unsalt ye, and thy quean of a mother into the bargain!" With the
flat of his cutlass he caught her a great swat upon the rump.

"Aieef' she protested. "Thou'rt a devil out o' Hell!"

"And thee a goose out o' Winchester!" Again he swung, and clapped
her smartly along the leg. Ebenezer flushed with anger, and McEvoy sprang
to his feet as though ready to leap to the damsel's aid from his perch on
the wagon seat. But though the girl protested loudly at her punishment,
her complaints were anything but tearful and abject.

"Ow/ 1 swear to Christ I'll murther ye in your sleep!"

"Not till I've done basting ye, ye shan't!"

The third blow was aimed where the first had struck, but by dint of
wrenching about and biting the miller's wrist, the girl caught it on her
hip instead and broke free as well.

"Hif Now try and clout me, damn your eyes!" She did not run off at
once, but lingered a moment to taunt him from a safe distance. "Look
at him wave his sword, that he bought to beat helpless women with! A
great ass is what he is!"

"And thee a whore!"

"And thee a cuckold! La, what a merry time we'll have, when Billy-Boy
takes the lousy scalp off ye!"

The miller roared and charged towards her, but the girl scampered off
well ahead of him and led him in a circle around the wagon. When he
gave up after a few moments, apparently resigned from past experience
to her nimbleness, she halted as well, bright-eyed and panting. Her nostrils
tightened; her chin dimpled with scorn. She spat in his direction.

"Buffoon!" With a toss of ash-blond curls she turned her back on him
and marched off down the street towards the mill; her father sashed his
weapon with a grunt and trudged after her» but clearly in the manner of
a skulking bodyguard rather than that of an assailant.

"That was Henrietta Russecks," Mary chuckled. "Ain't she the lively one,
though?"

But the men were appalled by the scene. It was some moments before
Ebenezer could find voice for his indignation, and then he railed at

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

length against the miller's spectacular ungallantry. McEvoy, when he found
his tongue, expressed even greater outrage, and added for good measure
a panegyric on the young lady.

"Mother o' God, what spirit, Eben! How she gave the great bully as
good as she got! Nor quailed for an instant! Nor shed a tear for his bloody
bastinadoes! I here swear to Heav'n I'll see her free o' that beast, if I must
murther him myself!"

Ebenezer showed some surprise at his companion's vehemence, and Mc-
Evoy blushed.

"Think what ye will," he grumbled, "and be damned t'ye! She hath
the face o' Helen and the soul of Agamemnon, hath that girl! Fire and
fancy, what Ben Oliver was wont to call the chiefest female virtues; oh,
'tis a rare, rare thing!"

'Te'd best not toy with Henrietta," Mary warned cordially. 4Te saw
what befell young Hanker yonder, for no more'n a friendly pat. La, the
rector o9 Trinity Church himself couldn't court Sir Hany's daughter with-
out a patent out o' peerage."

McEvoy sniffed and furrowed up in thought.

Mary laughed. "Come, lad, whate'er thy scheme, 'twill ne'er avail ye;
the blades round about have tried 'em all and gained naught but broken
bones for their trouble! Belike ye'll see the lass anon when I visit her
mother, but ne'er out o' sight of Sir Harry, on your life."

They decided to go directly to the mill, where, in addition to announcing
their presence to Russecks, Mary could consult the miller's wife for further
news of Billy Rumbly and his bride. On the way, for McEvoy's benefit,
she chattered on about Henrietta: the girl was four-and-twenty and of the
same lively temper as her mother, who had been a famous beauty in
her youth and could still turn the head of any young man with an eye
for pulchritude seasoned by experience. It was well past time for the
daughter to be wed, but so jealous was the miller of the title he had ap-
propriated from his wife, he would permit Henrietta no husband from
among the youth of the place; he held out for a suitor of noble birth. And
though with every passing year, as may well be supposed, the task of chap-
^ronage grew 'more difficult— especially since Mrs. Russecks, so far from
sharing her husband's sympathies, not only allied herself with Henrietta
in the cause of love but was actually prepared to join her daughter in any
amorous adventure they could contrive.

"Yet for all their ingenuity and the wiles of a score of would-be lovers,
Sir Harry hath managed to keep his eye on 'em day and night. When he's

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 655 ]

at the inn, they are his barmaids, more often than not; when he's at the
mill, they are his grist-girls. They even sleep all in a room, with Sir Harry's
cutlass hanging ready at the bedpost. Only once in all these years, to my
knowledge, have the pair of 'em got free of him—and marry, 'twas a fort-
night folk still talk aboutl"

If she was prepared to gossip more specifically, she had no time to, for
when they were still a hundred feet away from the mill— which from the
look of it served also as the family house— Harry Russecks stepped outside
and glared at them, arms akimbo. At the same time they saw in an up-
stairs window the figures of two women regarding them with interest:
mother and daughter, evidently, had been apprised of their approach. Mary
Mungummory returned their wave, but Ebenezer shivered.

"And ye say he fears these mill commissioners like the plague?" McEvoy
mused. Suddenly he laid his hand on Mary's arm. "I say, thou'rt a good
sort, Mary; will ye aid me in a little lark? And you as well, Eben? I owe
ye my life already; will ye stand me farther credit?" All he wished to do,
he explained to his skeptical companions, was give the -boorish miller a
draught of his own prescription; if he failed, none would be the worse for
it, and if he succeeded

TChrist, but let's put it to the test!" he said hurriedly, for they were
almost within earshot of the miller. "State thy own affairs as always, Mary,
and say ye know no more of us than that ye picked us up along the road
after the storm. Nay, more: ye suspect there is more to us than meets the
eye, inasmuch as we've been uncommon secretive from the first, and chary
o' stating our names and business."

" Twill ne'er succeed, lad/' Mary warned, but her eyes were twinkling
already at the prospect of a prank,

"Prithee, John/* Ebenezer whispered, "we've no time for frivolous ad-
ventures! Think of Bertiand and Captain Cairn " He could protest no

more for fear of being overheard> and McEvoy's expression was resolute.
The Irishman's sudden interest in the miller's daughter struck him not only
as a conventional impropriety and a breach of their solemn trust, but also
as a sort of infidelity to Joan Toast, despite the fact that Joan had clearly
abandoned McEvoy for himself, and that he himself had been unfaithful
to her in a sense by far less honorable than the sexual. He held his peace
and waited miserably to see what would develop.

"Afternoon, Sir Harryl" Mary called, and clambered down from the
wagon. "Just passing through, and came to pay my respects to Roxie/'

The miller ignored her. "Who are they?"

[656] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Them?" Mary glanced back in surprise, as if just noticing the presence
of her passengers. "Ah, them ye mean! . They're two wights I found near
Limbo Straits after the storm/' In a voice just audible to the poet she
added. "Said they had business in Church Creek, but they'd not say what
Ask 'em yourself. Is Roxie in?"

"Aye, but ye'll not see her," the miller declared, still glaring at the two
men. "Thou'rt no fit company for a lady, e'en though she be a bitch o'
perdition. Get on with ye!"

"Just as ye say/' She waited as McEvoy climbed down, followed by
Ebenezer. "If ye have any business farther north," she told them with a
wink, " 'twould be no chore for me to ferry ye. I'll be yonder by the inn
till tomorrow or next day."

"Most charitable of ye, madame," said McEvoy with a short bow. "And
I thank ye for service both to ourselves and to His Majesty. Believe me,
'twill not be long till we reward ye more tangibly/'

Ebenezer winced at the imposture.

"Who are ye?" Russecks demanded impatiently. "And what's your busi-
ness in Church Creek?"

McEvoy turned, and so far from being intimidated, he surveyed the
miller from head to toe with exaggerated suspicion. Mary, her face aglow,
made no move to leave the scene.

"Speak up, dajnmee!"

Ebenezer saw the great black beard commence to twitch in anger and
was tempted to end the hoax before it was irrevocably launched, but before
he could muster his courage McEvoy spoke.

"Did I hear this lady address you as Sir Harry?"

"Ye did, save ye be deef as well as cock-proud."

McEvqy looked accusingly at Mary. "Is't some strange humor of thine,
madame, or a prank betwixt the twain o' ye, to pretend this glowering
oaf is Sir Harry Russecks?"

From above, where the ladies had opened the casement to listen, came
a gasp and a titter; even staunch Mary was taken aback by the Irishman's
daring.

"How?" shouted the miller. "Doth he say I'm not Sir Harry?" His hand
flew to the hilt of his cutlass. "I'll skewer the saucy pup!"

"Nay, Ben, don't draw!" McEvoy cried to Ebenezer, who trembled
nearby. "What, ye left your short-sword in the wagon?" He threw back
his head and laughed; everyone, the miller and his women included, stood
dumfounded.

"'Tis well for thee, little miller," McEvoy said grimly, and went so

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [657]

far as to tweak the fellow's beard. "My friend Sir Benjamin had pricked
thy gizzard in a trice, as he hath pricked two hundred like ye in the service
of His Majesty. Now take us to Sir Harry,, and no more impertinence, else
I'll bid him flog the flour out o' thy hide/7

"If ye please, sir/* Mary broke in, plainly relishing the miller's discom-
fiture: "This is Sir Harry Russecks, on my life, sir, flour or no— yonder's
his wife and daughter, sir, that will swear to't."

The ladies at the window merrily confirmed the fact, but McEvoy
feigned some lingering doubt.

"If thou'rt Sir Harry Russecks, how is't thou'rt got up as a clownish laborer
in the mill?"

"What's that ye say? Why, don't ye know, sirs " He appealed to

Mary for aid.

"Why, 'tis Sir Harry's little whim, sir," Mary declared. "'Tis the mill
first earned his bread, ere he married Mrs. Russecks, and he's not one
to forget his humble birth, is good Sir Harry."

"Aye, aye, that's it; she hath hit the mark fair." For all his relief at the
explanation, Russecks appeared not entirely happy with the reference to
his humble birth. "Did ye— did I hear ye say thou'rt in the King's employ,
sirs?" He glanced with ill-disguised interest at the suddenly-knighted poet.

"In a manner o' speaking, aye," McEvoy declared. "But I'd as well tell
ye plainly at the outset, our commission went down with crew and pin-
nace in the storm, and till a new one comes from St Mary's ye have the
right to bar us from the premises an it please ye."

The miller's eyes widened, "Thou'rt Nicholson's commissioners?"

McEvoy refused either to affirm or deny the identification, declaring
that until his authority was legal he thought the wisest course would be
to speak no further of it.

"In any case/' he said in a tone less stern, " 'tis not alone on Nicholson's
business I travel. My name's McEvoy— Trade and Plantations when I'm
home in London— Sir Jonathan at Whitehall is my father."

"Ye don't tell me!" marveled the miller, not yet entirely free of suspicion.
"I can't say I have the pleasure o' knowing a Sir Jonathan McEvoy at
Whitehall."

"To our discredit, I'm sure/' McEvoy made a slight mocking bow. "But
I shan't lose hope that Mrs. Russecks may redeem us by acquaintance with
the name/'

This thrust evoked another response from the upstairs window; when
McEvoy raised his eyes to the ladies, Mrs. Russecks (who Ebenezer saw

[ gc8 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

was indeed the full-blown beauty Mary claimed her to be) nodded archly,
and smiling Henrietta made an eager curtsy.

McEvoy gestured towards Ebenezer. "This formidable fellow is my
friend Sir Benjamin Oliver, that thanks to his wondrous eye and stout right
arm is belike the youngest member o' the peerage. Ladies, I give ye Sir
Benjamin: a lion on the battlefield and a lambkin in the drawing-room!"

Ebenezer blushed both at the imposture and the characterization, but
bowed automatically to the ladies.

"The fact is," McEvoy went on, "Sir Benjamin's father is visiting the
plantations on business of his own, and I'm showing my bashful friend
here the countryside. Needless to say, he hath heard of Mrs. Russecks's
family in England/'

"Ye do not say!" The miller wiped his nose proudly with a forefinger,
all his skepticism vanished. "Heard o' Mrs. Russecks's family in England!
Come in, won't ye, gentlemen? Come in! Oh Roxie, did ye hear what the
gentleman said? Our family's the talk o' the English peerage! Come down
here!"

Mrs. Russecks lost no time in greeting the visitors at the door.

"This here's my wife Roxanne," the miller said proudly. "She's the
noblest damned lady on the Eastern Shore."

"Enchant^" McEvoy said, and to Ebenezer's horror, embraced the
woman in a loverlike fashion and kissed her ardently.

"Out upon't!" cried the miller, drawing his sword. "I say, dammee,
give o'er! What in thunder d'ye do there, 'pon my soul?"

McEvoy released his bewildered partner, feigning annoyance and sur-
prise. "Whate'er is thy husband alarmed at, Madame? Can it be he's igno-
rant of the Whitehall Salute? Have ye not schooled him in the customs o'
the court?"

Mrs. Russecks, still taken aback by the sudden embrace, managed to con-
fess the possibility that she herself might be out of touch with the very
latest fashions in behavior at Whitehall.

"I'll have his lewd head!" the miller threatened, raising the sword.

"My dear friend," McEvoy said, serene and patronizing, "at court, 'tis
the practice for every proper gentleman to embrace a lady thus on first
meeting her; only a bumpkin or a cad would insult her with a sniveling
little bow." He went on to declare, before Russecks could object, that while
he quite appreciated the difficulty provincial gentlemen must have in
keeping up with London society, he considered it therefore of the first
importance that they maintain an open mind and a humble willingness
to be instructed,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [659]

"Now put away your sword, that no gentleman should raise without
cause, and be so kind as to present us to your daughter."

Russecks hesitated, clearly torn between his desire to keep up with the
latest fashions of the court and his reluctance to deliver Henrietta into
the visitors' embraces. But his wife took the matter out of his hands.

"Henrietta, bestir thyself!" she scolded through the doorway. ''The gentle-
men will think thou'rt uncivil!"

The girl appeared at once from behind the jamb, curtsied to both men,
and prettily presented herself to McEvoy for her "Whitehall Salute," which
the Irishman executed with even more £lan than before. At the same time
Mrs. Russecks went up to Ebenezer and said, "We're most delighted to
have the privilege, Sir Benjamin," so that he was obliged to do the same
whether he would or no, and again with the eager-eyed, ash-blond daughter
who came after, still flushed from McEvoy's kiss, while the miller looked
on in helpless consternation.

Mary Mungummory beamed. 'Til just be yonder at the inn if there's
aught ye should want o' me," she called.

"Then ye may stable your horse right now and pay me her day's keep -in
advance," Russecks said crossly,

Mary did as she was told and left, but not before Ebenezer observed
a significant exchange of glances between her and Mrs. Russecks. At a
moment when her husband was boasting to McEvoy that he collected a
day's stabling chargS on every horse brought into Church Creek for more
than half a day, Mrs. Russecks had looked at Mary as if to ask, "Can it
be that this brash young man has actually deceived my husband?" And
further, "Do I dare believe his intentions are what they seem?" Mary's
response had been a wink so large and lecherous as to set the poet tingling
with apprehension*

i?: HIS MAJESTY'S PROVINCIAL WIND- AND
WATER-MILL COMMISSIONERS, WITH SEPARATE ENDS
IN VIEW, HAVE RECOURSE ON SEPARATE OCCASIONS
TO ALLEGORY

MCEVOY NOW EXPRESSED A DESIRE TO BE SHOWN THE OPERATION OF

the mill, explaining that though Heaven knew he himself had seen enough

[ 660 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

of them in the past several weeks, his friend Sir Benjamin, who had been
raised in London, might find the device amusing.

' "Aye, indeed so, young sirs," Russecks agreed. " Twill be a pleasure to
show ye! Roxanne, you and Henrietta begone, now, whilst I take the gen-
tlemen through my mill.

"Oh prithee, Father," Henrietta protested, " Twill be a lark for us to
go with ye! We're not afraid to climb ladders with the gentlemen, are we,
Mother?"

"Nay, dammee!" cried the miller. "Get ye gone, ere I raise a welt athwart
thy "

"Not another word/' McEvoy said firmly. "Tis the mark of a well-born
lady to crave a bit of adventure now and again, don't ye think? My arm,
Miss Henrietta, an it please ye." The girl took his arm at once, and Mrs.
Russecks Ebenezer's, and any further expostulations from the miller Mc-
Evoy prevented by a series of pointed questions about the establishment,

"How is't a gentleman stoops to such work as milling?" he wanted to
know as they entered the building.

"Ah, well, sir " Russecks laughed uncomfortably. " Tis as Mary said

—Miss Mungummory yonder, what I mean— ye might say I run it purely
for the sport oft, don't ye know. Tis beneath my station, I grant ye, but
a man wants something to fill his time, I always say."

"Hm."

Walking behind them, Ebenezer saw the Irishman reach boldly around
Henrietta's back with the arm opposite Russecks and give the girl a sportive
poke in the ribs. He blanched, but Mrs. Russecks, who saw the movement as
plainly as had he, only squeezed his arm and smiled. As for Henrietta,
she showed surprise but not a trace of indignation at the cavalier advance;
when her escort repeated it— simultaneously asking the miller why, if his
work was in the nature of an avocation, he charged such wondrously profit-
able fees for doing it— she was hard put to stifle her mirth. She caught his
hand; he promptly and unabashedly scratched her palm, and Mrs. Russecks,
instead of unleashing maternal wrath upon the seducer as the poet ex-
pected, sighed and dug her nails into the flexor of his arm.

"Stay, just a moment," McEvoy said, cutting into the millers explana-
tion that what revenue came from the mill was turned to community
improvements such as his inn and the tobacco storehouse he was construct-
ing farther down the creek. "I've an urgent private question, if ye please,"
With a mischievous expression he whispered loudly into Russecks's ear

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 66l ]

that he sorely needed to know whether the improvements of the place
included a jakes, and if so, where a man might find it in a hurry.

"Why, marry, out in the back, sir," the astonished miller answered, "or
—or thou'rt free to piss in the millrace, e'en as I do. What I mean "

"Enough: ye quite overwhelm me with hospitality. Ill use your millrace
and fore'er be in your debt. Adieu, all; on with the tour! I'll overtake ye
presently."

Thus abruptly he left them, followed by the ladies' marveling eyes; when
he returned a few minutes later he clapped Russecks on the back, called
him a poet and philosopher for having hit on that wondrous virtue in a
millrace, and with the other hand treated Henrietta to a surreptitious carni-
val of tweaks, pats, pokes, and pinches, so that she seemed ever on the
verge of swooning from mirth, titillation, and the effort it required to be-
tray nothing to her father.

"Isn't he the bold one?" Mrs. Russecks whispered to Ebenezer. The
poet was mortified to observe the lady's respiration quicken with vicarious
excitement and guessed she envied her daughter's having drawn the more
adventurous partner. But for all his desire to question Mrs, Russecks closely
on the matter of poor Miss Bromly, he had no taste at all for adulterous
flirtation, and would have abjured it on temperamental grounds even had
the circumstances been less perilous and less remote from their pressing
business with Billy Rumbly. How had he got into it, and however would
it end? His body stiffened, and when Mrs. Russecks, aping Henrietta's be-
havior with McEvoy, slipped a playful hand into his breeches pocket as
they moved single file along a catwalk near the grain hopper, his blood
ran cold. He was immensely relieved when the tour of the mill was done,
for so blatant by that time were McEvoy's liberties with Henrietta, the
miller must surely have caught sight of them in another minute. They
came out at the rear of the mill, facing the stable,

"There now, sirs," Harry Russecks said, "ye'll aSree ^here's not a better-
kept mill in the Province, will ye not, nor a better run?"

"As to the first, ye may not be far wide o' the mark," McEvoy allowed,
"As to the second— but stay, I vowed I'd have none o' business till my
papers reach me. I will say, 'twas fine sport to poke about in there; I have
toured many a Maryland mill, but none so pleasurably."

The miller spat proudly. "D'ye hear that, Roxie? Ha'n't I always held
'twas no disgrace for a gentleman to know his way around a mill?"

McEvoy went on, turning his eyes brazenly to Henrietta. "I was taken

[662] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

in particular by a handsome hopper I spied whilst we were climbing to
the loft. From what I could see, 'twas scarce broken in."

Ebenezer's heart sank, and even Henrietta blushed at the figure, but
the millei seemed not to grasp it, for he cried, "Now there's a sharp-eyed
fellow, 'pon my word! I made that hopper myself, sir, not long since, and
I'm passing proud oft. It's not been used but once so far, but 'twill give
good service for many a year. Tis a pity ye didn't just run a hand in, to
get the beauty of the lap-joints/'

"A pity in sooth," McEvoy agreed, and added, to the women's delight,
*Te may bank on't I'll not miss the chance again/'

Emboldened by the possibilities of the metaphor, Henrietta insisted that
no mere stroke of the hand could disclose the real excellence of the
device, which lay in the way it performed its intended function; only by
running his own grist through would Mr. McEvoy ever truly appreciate
it. The Irishman joyfully replied that nothing would please him more, al-
though he'd heard complaints from local planters about the fee,

"They're liars, all!" cried Russecks, who showed great alarm whenever
his guest brought up the matter of public relations. "Let 'em try to find
the likes o' that machinery in the county ere they grouse and tattle!
That stout little hopper's not the only marvel o' the place/'

Here Mrs. Russecks joined the conversation in support of her husband.
"Haply you were too distracted to remark then, Mr. McEvoy, but the mill-
stones themselves are most unusual/'

"Aye, that's a fact, sir," Russecks said eagerly. "Ye might have seen 'em
plainly from the ladderway. "They've been in daily use for near two-score
years, have those millstones, and they're better every year/'

Mrs. Russecks declared that Sir Benjamin had been better situated than
Mr. McEvoy to view these marvels, and added that their ever-increasing
excellence only demonstrated the truth of an axiom in the trade: The
older the millstones, the finer the grind.

"To be sure," Henrietta put in tartly, "it wants an uncommon big shaft
to fit such stones; the one father's using is nigh worn out/'

Ebenezer set his teeth. He looked about for a means of ending the
double'entendref and noticed that the stall where Mary had put Aphrodite
was empty.

"I say, Miss Mungummory's mare is gone; can it be she drove on
without us?''

"Nay, she'd never leave so soon/' Mrs. Russecks said, "We'd not e'en
had time to talk yet."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [663]

The miller declared there was nothing to be concerned about, but Mc-
Evoy insisted on seeking out Mary at the inn to make certain the mare had
not strayed. Very soon he returned with Mary in tow, making a great show
of anger and alarm.

"Really, Sir Harry!" he cried. "Is't your practice to let folks' horses wander
loose, after ye've extorted your gouging fee from 'em?"

For a moment the miller forgot his role: his face darkened, and his
hand went to his sword. "Gently there, young pup, or I'll soon "

"Where is that horse, sir?" McEvoy pressed. "Sir Benjamin and I owe
this lady our lives for bringing us out o' the marsh in her wagon, as I've
already apprised Governor Nicholson. D'ye think we'll stand by and see
her lose her mare from your negligence?"

"Ah, my poor sweet Aphrodite!" Mary lamented.

44My negligence!" the miller shouted.

"Aye, thine, as proprietor of the stables. Draw your sword, fellow, if
ye dare! Twill be no cowering planter ye face, but one o' King William's
deadliest."

"Nay, go to, gentlemen, go to!" the miller pleaded, no longer belligerent.
"D'ye think I turned the mare loose a-purpose? Ye were in plain sight
o' me all the while!"

Ebenezer suddenly understood what had happened, and his heart sank.

"I made no such charge," McEvoy said, "Nonetheless, thou'rt answerable
for the horse* A true gentleman would ne'er permit the thing to happen,
much less weasel out oft. Am I right, Mrs. Russecks?"

Though she seemed not quite to understand the Irishman's motives, Mrs.
Russecks agreed that caring for the property of his guests is a first concern
of the proper gentleman. For a moment Russecks seemed about to strike
her— Ebenezer guessed that in normal circumstances she'd never have dared
such an observation— but he arrested the impulse.

"Please, gentlemen, please! 'Twas no fault o' mine the jade wandered
off "

"La!" Maiy appealed to Providence. "He calls Aphrodite a jade!"

"Dammet, sirs, nobody's more a gentleman than I ami I'm the biggest
bloody gentleman in Church Creek!"

'Then find Aphrodite," McEvoy snapped, "or ye'll answer to the Gover-
nor himself."

"Find her! Many, lad, that nag could be halfway to Cambridge by now!"

w Tis a consideration as would ne'er deter your honest gentleman, I be-
lieve."

[664] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Please, sir!" Mrs. Russecks, though it was not clear whether she saw
the drift of things, took McEvoy's arm in supplication. "Don't be hard
on my husband in St. Mary's! Do but take a pot of tea with us, you and
Sir Benjamin, and I'm sure he'll have the mare back ere sunset."

"Ere sunset!" Russecks cried. "I've not said I'd go chasing after the

beast to begin with! What I mean God's blood, then, I'll find the

cursed animal! But I must have help."

"I'll search with ye," Mary volunteered at once. "I know Aphrodite's
ways and I'll ne'er rest easy till we track her down. You, sirs," Mary said
to McEvoy aijd Ebenezer, "go have your tea, nor take any measures against
Sir Harry till we return. Roxie and Henrietta will do their best to entertain
ye."

Now the miller was by no means pleased by this arrangement, but though
his face plainly registered reluctance, he permitted Mary to lead him off
towards a woods behind the stable. Ebenezer watched them go with faint-
ing spirits; he was not certain how much the women understood of Mc-
Evoy's means, but their exultant faces left no doubt that they guessed and
welcomed his end.

"Methinks I'll help them search," he ventured.

McEvoy laughed. "Nay, ladies, tell me truly: is Sir Benjamin England's
greatest coward or her greatest tease? I know for a fact he hath fathered
a regiment o' bastards, but to hear the scoundrel ye'd take him for a virgin."

"Stay, John; 'tis time to end disguises."

"Time enough," McEvoy agreed quickly, but instead of revealing their
true identities and stations, he confessed that he himself had set Miss Mun-
gummory's mare a-wandering, what time he'd feigned a visit to the mill-
race; he'd already freely said as much to Mary, who, by no means disturbed
at the news, had told him Aphrodite would go at once to a certain farm
not far away, where she'd been often stabled, and had offered to lead
Harry Russecks on a two-hour wild-goose chase before they found her,

"There's a queen among women," Mrs. Russecks declared unblushingly.
"So, then, gentlemen: let us go in to our tea, since my husband hath such
nice feeling for responsibility." She took Ebenezer's arm; McEvoy had
already encircled Henrietta's waist and drawn her to his side,

"Really, Mrs. Russecks," the poet said desperately, "there is a certain
pressing business I wish to discuss with you "

"There, now, Mr. McEvoy!" the miller's wife teased. "Your friend is as
importunate as yourself! Marry, in my youth men were more subtle— for
better or worse."

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 665 ]

"Nay, you refuse to understand!" Ebenezer protested. "I'm not what
you think I am at all!"

"So I'm beginning to grasp, you young rascal!"

"Pray, hear me "

"Peace, Sir Benjamin," McEvoy laughed, but Ebenezer saw alarm in
his eyes. "Thou'rt embarrassing Henrietta with your forwardness. Out on't,
Madame Russecks, methinks we'd best forego the tea, to spare your lovely
daughter farther blushes; by'r leave, I'll ask her to take me once again
through the mill, to see more closely what I only glimpsed before."

To this bald proposition Mrs. Russecks only replied, "I'm not disposed
to keep a man from His Majesty's business, sir; yet if on the grounds of
your commission you decide to try the mill machinery as well as inspect it,
I ask you to bear in mind two things . . /'

"Anything, madame: 'tis thine to command."

"First, then, albeit we have your statement for't that you've inspected
many a mill before, you must remember that this one is unaccustomed to
inspection. Tis very dear to me, e'en precious, sir; for all my husband
claims it as his own, 'tis not o' his making at all, but came to him with
my dowry, as't were. Moreover, we've our reputation to think of, and albeit
'tis a perfectly harmless thing thou'rt commissioned to, if 'twere generally
known what thou'rt about, certain ill-minded gossips would make a scandal
oft* In sum, then, inspect and try what ye will, Mr. McEvoy, but be gentle
and discreet as becomes an officer of the King,"

McEvoy bowed, "I pledge my life on't, lady; and may I say that of all
the beautiful women of my acquaintance, ye take the prize for gentleness
wedded to knowledge o* the great real world."

"And you, Henrietta/' Mrs, Russecks said more sternly. "Bear in mind
that the mill is a perilous place for novices."

"Methinks I know my way around it well enough, Mother!"

"Very well, but mind your step and stay alert for trouble*"

With this advice the couple left, and Mrs. Russecks turned to Ebenezer
with a strange, proud smile,

"Fetch me into the house, Sir Benjamin, and we'll attend to the pressing
business that so distracts you/'

Ebenezer sighed; it was chilly outside, and he was blind neither to Mrs.
Russecks's beauty nor to the excitement of her flattering invitation. Never-
theless as soon as they were seated in her parlor he declared that he
was not Sir Benjamin Oliver nor any other knight, and that neither he
nor his companion were traveling in any official capacity.

[ 666 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"As for my actual identity, I am ashamed oft, but Til tell it readily "

"Indeed you shan't!" Mrs. Russecks commanded, with some heat. "Me-
thinks thou'rt younger in the ways of the world than becomes thy years!
Do you take me for whore, sir, that swives all comers in the stews?"

"Prithee, nay, ma'am!"

"You've seen what a gross, unmannered bully is my husband," she went
on sharply. "Once in my youth I grew to despise the race of men, and to
loathe in myself those things that aroused their lust and mine: 'twas in
contempt of life I married Harry Russecks, so that every time he forced
me like a slavering brute of the woods, he'd strengthen twice over my
opinion of his sex."

"Mercy, ma'am! I scarce know what to think! Many's the time I've pitied
woman's lot, and reviled men's coarseness; yet a man is nine parts nature's
slave in such matters, methinks, and in any case I assure you not all men
are so coarse as your husband." He stopped, covered with confusion by
the unintended insult. "What I mean to say, ma'am "

"No matter." Mrs. Russecks's face softened; she smiled sweetly and laid
her hand upon Ebenezer's. "What you just told me, I knew in my heart
all along, and 'twas not long ere I saw the great folly of my marriage.
Yet I was and still am viptim of another folly, that I got like a family illness
from my father: I was too proud to renounce a grand course once I'd em-
barked on't, e'en though I saw 'twould lead to naught but pain and re-
vulsion. In lieu of admitting my blunder and leaving the Province, I re-
solved to make the best oft; I vowed I'd lose no opportunity to redeem
myself for scorning good men along with bad. That, sir, explains your pres-
ence here, and what you no doubt took to be immodest encouragement
on our part— I feel more pity for Henrietta than for myself, inasmuch as
'twas none of her choice to live with such a jealous and vigilant despot.
Yet albeit I freely own we've behaved like tarts, sir, I beg you remember
that we're not: 'twas to a knight I opened my door, and e'en good
Guinevere played harlot for a knight! To tell me now thou'rt only Ben,
the factor's son, or Slim Bill Bones, the sailor— 'twere les$ than delicate,
Sir Benjamin, were it not?"

While speaking she played distractedly with Ebenezer's hand, stroking
down each bony finger-top with her index nail; at the end she raised her
excellent brown eyes, furrowed her brows in whimsical appeal, and smiled
a little crooked smile as if to say, "My honor is quite in your hands now,
sir. Come what may, none can deny I've stated my case." Emotions

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [667]

strong and various buffeted Ebenezer. His cheeks burned; his heart beat
fast; his nose and eyebrows jerked and twitched.

"Dear lady " It was time to make a move; he must embrace her at

once, or throw himself upon his knees to protest his ardor— but though
the feelings so at odds within his breast were strangely different from those
he'd known in other passionate impasses, he was unable to bring himself
to do what the moment called for. "I beg you, madam: take no offense "

Mrs. Russecks drew back as if he had slapped her. Bewilderment was
followed at once in her expression by disbelief, which gave way in its turn
to cold wrath.

"Prithee, don't misunderstand "

" Tis not likely I shall, d'ye think?" she said furiously. "Or will you
tell me thou'rt a Christian saint disguised, that hath such a nice regard
for my husband's honor!"

"He is a boor," Ebenezer assured her. "What horns he wears, he hath
more than earned by's callous "

"Then the truth is plain," she snapped. "Your friend stole the filly and
left you to ride the foundered jade!"

"Nay, madam, b'm'faith! I've no wish to change places with McEvoy,
believe me!"

"Hear the wretch! He finds the pair of us sour to's taste, nor scruples
to tell us so to our faces! And you call my husband callous?"

Up to this point Ebenezer had spoken gently, even timidly, in his fear
of wounding the lady's pride. But among the curious new emotions that
possessed him was a strange self-assurance, even a quiet sort of boldness,
siich as he'd never felt before in a woman's presence. Where had he ac-
quired it? He scarcely bothered to wonder, but on the strength of it caught
her hand, held it fast against her efforts to wrench free, and pressed it
against his chest.

"Feel my heart!" he ordered. "Is that the pulse of a Christian saint?
See how my breast heaves and my mouth hangs parted with ardent res-
piration! Can you believe I sit here coldly?"

Taken aback by this sudden move, Mrs. Russecks made no reply; an
uncertain, irritated disdain took the place of her initial anger.

Ebenezer spoke on, still clasping her hand. "Thou'rt no child, Mrs.
Russecks; surely you can see you have possessed me with desire! Nay, only
twice in my life have I burned so, and both times— i'Christ, the memory
scalds me with remorse!— both times I came within an ace of commiting
rape upon the woman I loved! And 'sblood, thou'rt handsome— by far

[ 668 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the comeliest lady I've seen in Maryland! Thou'rt the masterwork
whereof your Henrietta's but a copy!"

In the face of these protestations, the miller's wife could maintain but
a pouting remnant of her fury. "What is't unmans you then?" She could
not restrain a smile, or Ebenezer a blush, when even as she spoke she
noticed that he was in a condition far from unmanly. "Or better, since
I see for a fact thou'rt ardent, what holds you back? Is't fear of my hus-
band?"

Ebenezer shook his head. "He is fearsome enough, but I trust Miss
Mungummory to detain him."

"Sure, thou'rt not afraid of the consequences? Tis not likely I'll ruin
my own name, d'ye think, or come seeking you out with my belly
a-blossom!"

-Nay, nay "

"Then where's the rub?" Her voice began to show fresh irritation. "Is't
that ye fear I'm poxed like many another strumpet? Tis a wondrous pru-
dent ravisher, i'faith, that asks his victims for a bill o' health!"

"Stay, you slander yourself, madam! I swear to Heav'n this is the rarest
opportunity of my life: who wins thy favors wins a splendid prize; the
world must regard him with awe and envy! Twere a rare, a singular pleasure
to accept so sweet a gift; 'tis a rare and singular pain to say you nay, and

would be e'en if my rejection were no insult " He paused and smiled.

"Dear lady, you little dream the whole and special nature your appeal bears
for me!"

His manner was so cordial, his compliment so curious, that Mrs. Russecks's
face softened again. Once more she demanded an explanation, and even
threatened in a vague way to denounce the poet to her husband as an
impostor if he would not be candid with her, but her tone was more
coaxing than annoyed.

"You upbraid yourself for having been forward," Ebenezer said, "and
declare I contemn you for't; yet the truth is, lady, thou'rt but the more
my conqueror for seizing the initiative. I admire your grace, I savor your

beauty, but beyond both How can I phrase it? Methinks you've tact

and wisdom enough to deal with my own blundering innocence, which else
would make a fiasco of our adventure , . ."

"Ah, now, Sir Benjamin, this is no ravisher I hear speaking!"

"Nay, hear me out! I'll not disclose my actual name, if you must have
it so, but there's a thing you must know. 'Tis a thing I'd hide from one
less gentle, lest she wound me with't; but you, lady—ah, belike 'tis folly,

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 669 ]

but I've an image of you surprised, charmed, e'en delighted at the fact-
yet infinitely tender and, above all, appreciative. Aye, supremely appreci-
ative, as I should be if " Bemused by the picture in his mind, Ebenezer

would have detailed it further, but the miller's wife cut him short, declaring
candidly that her curiosity was now a match for her ardor, and should
he deny her satisfaction of the one as well as the other, he must watch her
perish upon the spot and suffer the consequences.

"Heav'n forfend." The poet laughed, still marveling at the ease with
which he could speak. "The simple truth oft is, my dear Mrs. Russecks,
for all my twenty-eight years of age, I am as innocent as a nursling, and
have vowed to remain so."

His prediction regarding the effect of this announcement on the mill-
er's wife was in some measure borne out: she studied his face as if searching
it for evidence of insincerity, and apparently finding none, asked in a chas-
tened voice, "Do you mean to tell me— and thou'rt no priest?"

"Not of the Roman or any other church," Ebenezer declared. He went
on to explain to her how at the outset, being a shy ungainly fellow, he
had come to regard his innocence as a virtue rather from necessity; how
not a year past (though it seemed like decades!) he had elevated it, along
with a certain artistic bent of his, to a style of life, even identifying it
with the essence of his spiritual being; and how through a year of the
most frightful tribulation, and at a staggering expense not only of property
but perhaps of human lives, he had managed to preserve it intact. It had
been some while since he'd been obliged to consider seriously the matter
of his innocence, and though to enlarge upon its virtues and shudder
verbally at the prospect of its loss had become second nature for him,
he was surprised to find himself dissociated emotionally from his panegyric;
standing off, as if it were, and listening critically. Since the morning he had
composed his hymn to Chastity, what buffetings from life he had endured!
Indeed, when Mrs. Russecks asked with sharp interest for an explanation
of this wondrous innocence, he was obliged to admit, both to her and to
himself, that he could call himself innocent no longer except with regard
to physical love.

But the lady was not yet satisfied, "Do you mean you've no notion of
what your friend and Henrietta have been about this last half hour?"

Ebenezer blushed, not alone at the reference to the other couple, but
also at the realization (which he readily confessed to Mrs. Russecks)
that even in the physical sense his innocence had come to be limited to
the mere technical feet of his virginity— which fact itself (though he would

[670] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

not elaborate further) was not so altogether unqualified as he might wish

"The truth oft is, then/' Mrs. Russecks persisted, "this precious Inno
cence you cling to hath been picked at and pecked at till you've scarce s
meager tit-bit oft left."

"I must own that is the case, more's the pity."

"And doth that wretched tatter mean so much?"

Ebenezer sighed. The critical listener in his soul had posed that very
question not many moments earlier, during his speech, and had observed
by way of answer a startling fact: his loss of the quality of innocence, it
suddenly seemed, had been accompanied by a commensurate diminution
of the actual value that he placed on it; although he still sang its praises
from witless force of habit, he had been astonished to remark, in these
moments of dispassionate appraisal, what slight emotion he truly felt now
at the thought of losing it altogether. Thus his sigh, and the slight smile
with which he replied, "In sooth I have grown indifferent to't, lady. Nay,
more: I am right weary— weary of innocence."

"La, then speak no farther!" Her voice was husky, her eyes bright; she
held out both her hands for him to take. "Hither with thee, and an
end to innocence!"

But though he took her hands to show her that his own were a-tremble
with desire and appreciation, Ebenezer would not embrace her.

"What I prized before hath all but lost its point," he said gently, "and
when I think that soon or late 'twill come, this end to innocence you
speak of, as sure as death will come, and belike in circumstances by no
means so pleasurable as these, why, then I wonder: What moral doth the
story hold? Is't that the universe is vain? The chaste and consecrated life
a hollow madness? Or is't that what the cosmos lacks we must ourselves
supply? My brave assault on Maryland— this knight-errantry of Innocence
and Art— sure, I see now • twas an edifice raised not e'en on sand but on
the black and vasty zephyrs of the Pit, Wherefore a voice in me cries,
'Down with't, then!' while another stands in awe before the enterprise;
sees in the vain construction all nobleness allowed to fallen men. Tis no
mere castle in the air, this second voice says, but a temple of the mind*
Athene's shrine, where the Intellect seeks refuge from Furies more terrific
than e'er beset Orestes in the play "

"Enough!" Mrs. Russecks protested, but not incordially. "Since 'tis plain
you'll have none of me, I withdraw my invitation. But don't expect me
to fathom this talk of Pits and Castles: speak your piece in Church Creek
English, else I'll never know in what wise I'm insulted!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 671 ]

Ebenezer shook his head in admiration. 'Here's nobility in sooth, that
is rendered gracious by rejection! And here's a paradox, for this same grace
that lends me courage to make clear my resolve, at the same time deals
it a nigh-to-mortal blowl"

"Go to; 'tis a plain account I crave, not flattery."

Thus assured, Ebenezer declared that although to present her then and
there with the final vestige of his innocence would be a privilege as well
as a joy, he was resolved to deny himself a pleasure which, however sublime,
would be devoid of a right significance.

"When erst I entered the lists of Life," he said, "Virginity was a silken
standard that I waved, all bright and newly stitched, 'Tis weatherblast and
run now, and so rent by the shocks of combat e'en its bearer might
mistake it for a boot rag. Notwithstanding which, 'tis a banner still, and
hath earned this final dignity of standards: since I must lose it, I'll not
abandon it by the way, but surrender it with honor in the field."

The poet himself was not displeased by this conceit, which he judged
to be acceptably free from insult as well as lucid and sincere. Whether the
miller's wife shared his good opinion, however, he never did learn, for
even as he prepared to question her she sprang up white-faced from the
couch, having heard an instant before he did the sound of running foot-
falls up the path*

"Pray God to spare you for the day of that surrender," she said, in a
voice quite shaken with fright. "Here is my husband at the door!"

14: OBLIVION IS ATTAINED TWICE BY THE MIDLER'S
WIFE, ONCE BY THE MILLER HIMSELF, AND NOT AT ALL
BY THE POET, WHO LIKENS LIFE TO A SHAMELESS
PLAYWRIGHT

MRS. KUSSECKS'S FRIGHT, SO OXTT OF KEEPrNG WITH HER CHARACTER,

provoked such terror in Ebenezer that at sight of the miller rushing in with
sword held high, he came near to suffering again the misfortune he had
suffered at the King o' the Seas in Plymouth. His stomach curdled; perspi-
ration ran from his pores; he could neither move nor speak.

"Mercy, my dear!" Mrs. Russecks cried, running to her husband. "What-
ever is the matter?"

[672] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Go to, don't I'll have thy whoring head along with his!7'

He endeavored to push her aside in order to get at the cowering poet, bul
she clung fast to him like a vine upon an oak, so that he could only hobbk
across the parlor.

"Stay, Harry, thou'rt mistaken!" she pleaded. "Whatever thy suspicions
God smite me dead if there hath been aught 'twist this man and me!"

"Tis I shall smite!" the miller cried. "Commissioner or no, there's guilt
writ plain athwart his ugly face!"

"As Heav'n is my witness, sir!" Ebenezer pleaded, "Madame Russecks
and I were merely conversing!" But however true the letter of his protest,
his face indeed belied it. He leaped for safety as the miller swung.

"Hold still, dammee!"

The miller paused to fetch his wife so considerable a swat with the back
of his free hand that she gave a cry and fell to the floor. "Now we'll see thy
liquorous innards!"

Ebenezer strove desperately to keep the parlor table between himself and
dismemberment.

"Let him go!" Mrs. Russecks shrieked. " Tis the other one you must
find, ere he swive Henrietta!"

These words undoubtedly saved the poet's life, for Harry Russecks had
flung over the table with one hand and driven him into a corner. But the
mention of Henrietta, whom he had apparently forgotten, drove the miller
nearly mad with rage; he turned on his wife, and for an instant Ebenezer
was certain she would suffer the fate he had temporarily been spared,

"He fetched her into the woods," Mrs. Russecks said quickly, "and vowed
he'd murther her if Sir Benjamin or myself so much blinked eye at him!"

Relieved as he was to see her strategy, Ebenezer could not imagine that
anyone would be fooled by an assertion so improbable in itself and so
discrepant with his own testimony that he and the woman had been idly
conversing. But he was reckoning without the miller's violent passion; like a
wounded boar at scent of his injurer, Russecks gave a sort of squealing grunt
and charged outdoors.

"Make haste to the mill!" Mrs. Russecks cried to Ebenezer. "Bid Henri-
etta slip into the woods where Harry and I can find her, and you and your
friend hide yourselves in Mary's wagon!"

The poet jumped to follow her instructions, but upon stepping outside,
just a few seconds behind the miller, they saw the plan foiled before their
eyes. Mary Mungummoiy, leading the lost Aphrodite, had ran puffing and
panting into th'e dooryard just as the miller charged out again; at the same

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 673 ]

moment, though Ebenezer could not see them from the front steps of the
house, either McEvoy or Henrietta or both must have peered out from the
mill to see what the commotion was about, for although Russecks was
headed in the general direction of the woods, Mary, knowing nothing of
the ruse, dropped Aphrodite's halter and ran as best she could toward the
mill, calling "Run for your life! Go back! Here comes Sir Harry!" The miller
stopped in his tracks, wheeled about, and lumbered after. A scream came
from the mill and was answered by another from Mrs. Russecks, who ran a
few steps as though to intercept her husband and then, either stumbling
or swooning, fell to the ground.

Ebenezer found himself running also, but with no idea at all what to do.
He was still somewhat closer to the mill door than was Russecks and could
doubtless have headed him off, but with no weapons of his own (nor any
familiarity with their use), such a course would have been suicidal as well
as ineffective. Yet neither could he simply stand by or look to his own
escape while McEvoy, and perhaps the girl too, were done to death. There-
fore he simply trotted without object into the yard, ready to change course
and speed at once should the miller turn upon him, and when Russecks
charged past without a glance, he turned and followed a safe ten yards
behind*

Mary, meanwhile, had disappeared, but as soon as Russecks entered the
mill (whence issued at once fresh screams from Henrietta) she trundled
from around the corner, most distraught

"God's blood, Mister Cooke, hell murther the lot o' ye! I swear I did all
a body could, but the farther we went, the more jealous he grew, till he
swore he'd go no farther for the King himself! Nay, don't go 'in, sir; 'tis
your life! Ah, Christ, yonder lies poor Roxie, done to death!"

She hurried off to the fallen Mrs. Russecks, whom she supposed to have
been run through by the miller, and Ebenezer, ignoring her advice, pro-
ceeded quickly into the mill Already Russecks had started up the ladder
that led to the catwalk and grain hopper; McEvoy was just scrambling from
the upper rungs of the second ladder, which led from the hopper to the
loft; and near the edge of the loft itself stood pretty Henrietta, self-
incriminated by the petticoats in which she stood and screamed.

"Ha! Yell run no farther!" the miller shouted from the platform, and
Ebenezer realized that the lovers were trapped.

'Throw down the ladderl" he cried to McEvoy. The Irishman heard him
and leaped to follow his counsel just as Russecks began to climb. But al-
though the ladder was neither nailed nor tied in place, its stringers had

[ 674 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

been wedged between two protruding floor-joists of the loft, too tightly
for McEvoy to free them by hand from his awkward position. The miller
climbed with difficulty to the second rung, the third, and the fourth, holding
the cutlass in his hand and watching his quarry's futile struggle.

Now on the platform himself, Ebenezer watched with fainting heart.
"Throw something down, John! Knock him off!"

McEvoy looked wildly about the loft for a missile and came up with
nothing more formidable than a piece of cypress studding, perhaps three
feet long and three inches on a side. For a moment he stood poised to hurl
it; Russecks halted his climb and waited to dodge the blowT growling and
jeering. Then, thinking better of it, McEvoy fitted one end of the stud be-
hind the topmost rung of the ladder, and using the edge of the loft for a
fulcrum, pulled back upon the other with all his weight. There was a loud
crack; Ebenezer, fearing the worst, caught his breath; but apparently
neither rung nor lever had broken, for McEvoy, after one quick glance,
placed a foot against each stringer-top for extra mechanical advantage and
heaved back again. Another crack: Ebenezer distinctly saw the ladder move
out an inch or so, and the miller, uncertain whether to rush for the top or
climb down before he fell, gripped the sides more tightly and cursed. The
new angle of the lever afforded McEvoy less of a purchase and tended to
lift as well as push the ladder, but Henrietta sprang to his assistance, and
on the third try their joint effort succeeded in freeing the ladder from the
joists. Its slight inclination kept it from falling backwards at once, and in
the moment required for McEvoy to pull it over sideways, the miller jumped
safely to the platform.

McEvoy laughed. "Love conquers dl, Your Majesty! Murther us now,
sir!"

Russecks picked himself up and shook his sword at the loft- '*Well done,
dammee; what keeps me down will keep ye up, and we shall see how soon
ye choke on your damned love! There's many a keep taken by siege that
hath withstood the most furious assaultsf

Ebenezer had observed all this from the far end of the same platform on
which the miller now stood and had seen the gravity of their position earlier
than had either McEvoy or Henrietta, who were dismayed by Russeeks's
words. That his own position was far from safe did not occur to him; his
whole attention was directed to the lovers, and when he recalled that Mc-
Evoy knew nothing of Mrs. Russecfcs's abduction-story, his sudden vision of
a stratagem bjinded him to more prudent considerations.

"Prithee, sir!" he cried to the miller, in a voice loud enough for them to

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 675 ]

hear and be advised by. "Don't tempt his anger, I beg you, while he hath
your daughter in his clutches! However he hath wronged you, 'tis better he
go free than that he murther Henrietta before your eyes, or work lewd
tortures on her as desperate men are wont "

He got no farther; whether Russecks had heard his earlier suggestions to
McEvoy or now noticed his presence for the first time, he was clearly of
the same mind no longer about the poet's innocence. He turned on him,
brandishing the cutlass, and said, "WTzo gives a man horns must beware of
a goring/"

Ebenezer lost no time fleeing down the nearby ladder to the ground and
racing for the front doorway, where he saw Mary and the miller's wife
anxiously looking on. But however distraught, Mrs. Russecks still had her
wits about her; before Ebenezer reached the door she ran in towards the
fallen ladder.

"Now, Henrietta! Climb down while he chases Sir Benjamin!"

Her order was so public and premature, its object must have been merely
to divert her husband. If so, it succeeded at once: the miller stopped half
across the platform and glared from her to the loft.

Til quarter the lot o' ye!"

Ebenezer spied against the wall a hooked iron rod, like a fireplace poker,
and snatching it up, hastened to Mrs. Russecks's defense.

"Go to the inn/' he ordered Mary, "and fetch all the folk this wretch
hath bullied!"

"Bravo/" McEvoy shouted from the loft. "Let him run ye round the
millstones, Eben, till I scramble down; 'tis one against all the rest of us,
and I've a sickle here to match his bloody meat-axe!"

So saying he hurled his piece of studding at the miller, tucked the new-
found sickle into his belt, and swung his legs around one of two wooden
pillars supporting the loft, ready to climb down at the first opportunity.
Maty disappeared, presumably on her errand, and Mrs. Russecks, with a
wary eye on her husband, struggled to raise the fallen ladder. Russecks him-
self, though untouched by McEvoy's missile, seemed driven to the verge of
apoplexy by his own wrath. After some moments of indecision he fixed his
attention upon Ebenezer, who trembled at the hatred in his face,

" Twill not be two against one for long!" He advanced two steps to-
wards the end of the platform and then, seeing Ebenezer prepare to flee,
turned back to the middle and commenced to climb the railing. It was
evidently his intention either to jump or to climb down upon the mill-

[676] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

stones themselves in order to prevent Ebenezer from playing the part of
Hector around the walls of Troy.

"Ah, nay!" Mrs. Russecks cried at once, and before her husband could
let go the railing she sprang to pull the lever that engaged the millstone
shaft with that of the waterwheel outside. The great top stone rumbled
and turned, and Russecks jerked himself up, his footing removed from
under him.

"God dammee!" he bellowed almost tearfully. "God dammee one and
all!-"

Holding on with his free hand, he threw his leg back over the rail to
regain the platform and was undone: as he swung himself over, the great
scabbard at his inside hip caught momentarily between the rails; to free it
he drew back his abdomen and endeavored to hold on with the finger ends
of his cutlass-bearing hand. They slipped at once, and being either un-
willing or unable to let go his sword and snatch for a new grip, he tumbled
backwards. Both women screamed as a matter of course, and Ebenezer's
nerves tingled. The distance of the fall was short, the attitude deadly:
Russecks's bootheels were still at the level of the platform when his head
struck the millstone below.

"Smite him!" McEvoy called to Ebenezer. But there was no need to, for
the miller's head and shoulders rolled off the stone and he lay senseless on
the ground. Henrietta waxed hysterical at the sight; her mother, on the
other hand, screamed no more after the first time, but calmly pushed the
clutch-lever to disengage the stone and only then inquired of Ebenezer,
"Is he dead?"

The poet made a gingerly examination. The back of the miller's head was
bloody where it had struck, but he was respiring still.

"He seems alive, but knocked quite senseless. Tis likely he cracked his
skull."

"Worse luck 'twas not his neck," Mrs. Russecks said*

Mary Mungummory peered cautiously through the doorway. "Heav'n be
praised, the blackguard's dead! Not a coward would come to help, for all
he hath abused 'em, and Master Poet hath turned the trick himself!"

"Nay," said McEvoy, on the ground at last, "he tricked himself, did Sir
Harry, and he's not dead yet." He took up the cutlass and held it to the
miller's throat. "With your permission, Mrs. Russecks * . ."

But though the miller's wife showed no emotion whatever regarding his
accident, she would not permit a coup de gr&e* "Fetch down my daughter,
sir, an it please you, and we'll put my husband to bed/*

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [677]

All the company showed surprise, and all but Ebenezer indignation as
well

"The scoundrel might come to his senses any minute and have at us
again!" McEvoy protested.

"I trust you and Sir Benjamin will be well out of Church Creek ere he
comes to."

"What of thyself, lady?" Ebenezer asked.

"And Henriettal" McEvoy protested.

Mrs. Russecks replied that for all his threats, her husband would do no
worse than beat the two of them, and they had lived through many such
beatings before.

"Tis all very fine if yeVe a taste for birch," McEvoy said shortly, "but
the devil shan't lay a finger on Henrietta!" He put up the sword with
disgust and carried the fallen ladder toward the platform from which it
reached the loft "Til fetch her out o' the county if need be!"

"Henrietta may stay or leave as she pleases," Mrs* Russecks declared.

Mary Mungummory regarded the witless miller and shook her head. "I
cannot fathom ye, Roxannel Yd have swore ye'd rejoice to see the beast
dead, as every soul else in Church Creek would! Sure, thou'rt not o' that
queer sort that lust after floggings, are ye? The sort that hire my girls to
have at 'em with a cato'-nine-tails? Or haply thou'rt of such soft stuff e'en
a wounded viper moves ye to pity?"

Mrs, Russecks waved an irritated hand at her friend. "I loathe him, Mary:
none knows that better than you, that hath listened to the tale of my trials
these fiv&and-twenty years. He is the grossest of men, and the cruellest; he
hath made a torture of my life, and poor Henrietta's. I wed him knowing
full well 'twould be so, and God hath fitly punished me for that sin; 'tis not
for me to terminate that punishment,"

Ebenezer was moved by this speech, but at the risk of offending her he
ventured to point out that she had not scrupled to commit adultery in the
past

"What doth that serve to prove," she demanded sharply, "save that
mortals sometimes stray from the path of saints? 'Tis true I've played him
false with pleasure; 'tis likewise true I rejoiced to see him fall (albeit 'twas
not my motive when I pulled the lever), and would rejoice thrice o'er to
see him in the grave. But 'twill ne'er be I that puts him there or gives any
soul leave to murther him."

Mary sniffed- M 'Sheart, is this Roxie Russecks I hear, or Mary Magdalene?
At least don't nurse the scoundrel back to health, if ye've any love left for

[ 678 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the rest o* mankind; leave him here where he fell, and belike he'll be in
Hell ere morning."

But Mrs. Russecks stood firm and ordered Henrietta— now properly at-
tired and rescued from the loft— to help her carry the still-senseless miller
to his chamber. The girl looked uncertainly to McEvoy, whose eyes chal-
lenged her, and refused to obey.

"I pray ye'll forgive me, Mother, but I shan't lift a finger to save him. I
hope he dies."

Her mother frowned for just an instant; on second thought she smiled
and declared that if Henrietta intended to "place herself under the pro-
tection" of Mr. McEvoy, the two of them could depart immediately with
her blessing and should do so before Russecks regained consciousness; then,
to the surprise of Ebenezer and McEvoy, she added something in rapid,
murmuring French, of which the poet caught only the noun dispense de
bans and the adverb bientdt Henrietta blushed like a virgin and replied
first in clearer French that while she had reason to believe McEvoy actually
admired her & la point de fiangailles, she had no intention of becoming his
mistress until she had further knowledge of his station in life. "For the
present," she continued in English, "I mean to stay here with you and
share your misfortunes, but dammee if Fll do aught to hasten their comingl"

"Well spoken!" Mary applauded. "No more will I, Roxie; 'twere mad-
ness!"

"Nor I," McEvoy joined in; "Neither will I run off like a mouse ere the
cat awakes. I mean to stand guard outside his chamber with this sword, if
ye will permit me—or on the edge o' yonder woods if ye will not— and the
hour he lays a wrathful hand on Henrietta shall be his last on earth, if it be
not mine."

"Tis past my strength to carry him alone," Mrs. Russecks entreated
Ebenezer. "I beg you to help me, sir."

Feeling partly responsible for the miller's condition, Ebenezer agreed.
The brief exchange in French had set his mind strangely abuzz, so that he
scarcely heard the protests of the others until Mary happened to say, as
they left the mill, "Whence sprang this nice concern for the devil's health,
Roxie? There was a time you abandoned him right readily to be murthered!"

" Twas that time taught me my lesson," Mrs. Russecks replied, "else I'd
ne'er have ransomed him. If they had thrown him to the sharks, methinks
I'd have ended my own life as well"

A number of villagers had gathered between the inn and the mill to learn
the outcome of the fight; on catching sight of the vanquished miller they

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [679]

sent up a cheer, whereupon Mrs. Russecks dispatched Mary to warn them
that their joy was in some measure premature. The rest of the party entered
the house; Henrietta and McEvoy remained in the parlor, while Mrs.
Russecks and the poet carried their burden to the master's bedroom. The
miller showed no signs at all of recovering from his coma, even when his
wife set to work washing and bandaging his injury.

"I shall bind up his head and fetch him a physician," she sighed. "If he
lives, he lives; if he dies, he dies. In any case I am your debtor for humoring
my wishes/' She paused, noticing the poet's distracted countenance. "Is
something amiss, sir?"

"Only my curiosity," Ebenezer answered. "If you fancy yourself in my
debt, dear lady, prithee discharge it by allowing me one bold question: were
you and your daughter once captured by a pirate named Thomas Pound?"

The woman's alarm made clear the answer. She looked with new eyes
at Ebenezer and marveled as though to herself, "Aye, but why did it not

occur to me before? Your weathered clothes and stoiy of a shipwreck !

But 'tis nigh six years ago you captured us, 'twixt Jamestown and St. Mary's
— howe'er could you recall it?"

"Nay, madam, I am no pirate"— Ebenezer laughed— "nor ever was; else
'twere not likely I'd be yet a virgin, do you think?"

Mrs. Russecks colored. "Yet surely our shame is not the talk of England,
and thou'rt not a native of the Province. How is't you know the story?"

" Tis more famous than you imagine," the poet teased. "I swear to you
I heard it from my tutor in Magdalene College."

"Nay, sir, don't shame me farther! Speak the truth!"

Ebenezer assured her that he had done just that. "This tutor is an odd and
formidable fellow, that hath been equally at home in Tom Pound's fo'c'sle
and Isaac Newton's study; to this hour I know not whether he is at heart a
fiend or a philosopher. 'Tis in search of him and his salvage brother I came
hither, for reasons so momentous I tremble to tell them, and so urgent—
ah well, you shall judge for yourself anon, when I explain. This man, dear
lady, you were once of wondrous service to, albeit you knew it not, and in
consideration of that service he saved your life and honor from the pirates.
Have you e'er heard tell of Henry Burlingame?"

Mrs, Russecks crimsoned further; looking to assure herself that neither
.her husband nor the couple in the parlor had overheard, she closed the
bedroom door. Ebenezer apologized for his ungallantry and begged for-
giveness on grounds of the great urgency of his mission, adding that Henry
Burlingame (which, he gave her to understand, was actually the name of

[ 680 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

her savior and quondam lover) had surely not told the story to anyone else,
and that he had expressed nothing but the fondest and most chivalrous
opinions of both Mrs. Russecks and her daughter. The miller's wife glanced
uneasily toward the door.

"Let me assure you farther/' Ebenezer said. "You need not be anxious
after Henrietta's honor: McEvoy knows naught of this/'

"Methinks he hath learned already she is no virgin, for all that's worth,"
Mrs. Russecks said candidly. "But I must tell you, Mister— Benjamin— albeit
'tis an empty point of honor and bespeaks no merit for us whatsoever, thy
tutor is a most uncommon sort of lover, such as I've ne'er heard tell of
before or since, and 'tis quite likely you have a wrong conception of our
adventure . . /'

Ebenezer lowered his eyes in embarrassment and admitted that he had
indeed been misled on that matter— and not alone with regard to the two
ladies present— until quite recently, when the curious truth about Burlin-
game had been discovered to him with strange, unsuspected significance
both personal and general.

"I'God, lady, such a deal I have to tell you! Burlingame's quest, that you
yourself played no small role inl My own enormous errand, wherein you
may play yet another role! What a shameless, marvelous dramatist is Life,
that daily plots coincidences e'en Chaucer would not dare and ventures
complications too knotty for Boccacce!"

Mrs. Russecks concurred with this sentiment and expressed her readiness
to hear the full story once she'd had a private word with Henrietta to spare
her daughter unnecessary alarm. "Methinks my husband will not soon be
dangerous, and whate'er this weighty quest of thine, I'm sure it can wait
till morning. 'Twill make a pleasant evening's telling, Sir Benjamin/'

"Ah, then, may we not have done with pseudonyms at last?" What with
his flattering adventure of the afternoon, his escape from the terrible miller,
and his recognition of the Russecks women as the same whom Burlingame
had saved from the pirates' attack, Ebenezer was in more buoyant spirits
than he had enjoyed for some time. As they left the miller's bedside he
boldly put his arm about Mrs, Russecks's waist "I am no more Sir Benjamin
Oliver than McEvoy is His Majesty's Commissioner of Provincial Wind-
and Water-Mills; did you not hear Mary call me 'Mister Poet?' "

He felt the miller's wife stiffen and removed his arm, assuming that she
was not pleased by the familiarity; to cover his embarrassment he pretended
that it was his vocation which disturbed her. "Ah, now, is a poet less

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 68l ]

attractive than a knight? What if peradventure he bore a pompous title,
like Laureate of Maryland?97

Mrs. Russecks averted her eyes. "You replace one disguise with another/'
she said tersely.

"Nay, I swear't! I am Ebenezer Cooke, that once pretended to the title
Laureate of Maryland!7

The miller's wife seemed not so much skeptical as angry. "Why do you
lie to me? I happen to know for a certainty that the Laureate of Maryland
is living at Maiden this minute with his father and doth not resemble you
in any particular,"

Ebenezer laughed, though somewhat disconcerted by her manner. " Tis
no surprise to me if certain evil men have hired a brace of new impostors;
their motives still appall me, but I've grown quite used to their methods.
But look me straight in the face, my dear Roxanne: I swear by all that's
dear to me, I am Ebenezer Cooke of St. Giles in the Fields and Maiden/'

Mrs, Russecks turned to him a drained, incredulous face. "Dear Heav'n,
what if we "

"Go to, thou'rt a new Descartes for doubting! Summon good Mary
hither, that saw me grant away my property like a ninny!"

His protest went no further, for Mrs. Russecks turned to the door, laid
her hand upon the knob, and swooned to the floor as senseless as her
husband.

15: IN PURSUIT OF HIS MANIFOLD OBJECTIVES THE
P(3ET MEETS AN UNSAVAGED SAVAGE HUSBAND AND
AN UNENGLISHED ENGLISH WIFE

HENRIETTA AND MCEVOY CAME QUICKLY AT EBENEZER*S SUMMONS, AND

with the assistance of Mary Mungummory, who had returned in the mean-
time, Mrs. Russecks was put to bed in Henrietta's room. It was generally
agreed, even after Ebenezer had explained the odd circumstances of her
swoon, that the strain of the afternoon's events was the cause of it; no one
could suggest a more reasonable account. But when, a little later, Mrs.
Russecks was revived by salts of ammonia, she demanded, through Mary,
that Ebenezer leave her house immediately and never return,
"Thou'rt a sly deceiver, Ebenl" McEvoy teased, though he was as

[ 682 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

mystified by the demand as were the others. "What is't ye tried to do in
the chamber yonder?"

"I swear to Heav'n I have done naught!" the poet protested. "Prithee,
Mary, tell her I shall go instantly, but I must know in what wise I oiended
her, and crave her pardon for't!"

Mary delivered the message and came back to report that Mrs. Russecks
would neither explain her demand nor give ear to any blanket apologies
for affrontive words or deeds. "She said The man hath done naught amiss,
Mary, but I cannot bear him in my house7— her very words! De'il take me if
I've e'er seen the like oft; have you, Henrietta?"

The girl agreed that such passionate unreasonableness was quite out of
character for her mother, who as a rule was the soul of hospitality and took
special pains not to share her husband's failings.

Ebenezer sighed. "Ah well, then I must leave at once and find a bed
somewhere. Prithee think no ill of me, Miss Russecks, and do endeavor to
learn what lies behind all this, for I shan't rest easy till I've heard and
redressed it/' In the morning, he went on to say, he would find some means
of traveling to Tobacco Stick Bay; whether his double mission there met
success or failure, he would soon return to Church Creek, where he pro-
foundly hoped to find Mrs. Russecks relenting enough if not to forgive, at
least to explain his faux pas. "You had best remain here," he told McEvoy,
whose face had registered great discomfort at the mention of leaving. "If
the twain of us go, Billy Rumbly might think he's being threatened."

"Did you say Billy Rumbly?" Henrietta asked.

"He did that," Mary affirmed, "but ye must swallow your curiosity till
Mr. McEvoy and I can tell ye the tale." To Ebenezer she said, " 'Tis you
must forgive poor Roxie, Mr. Cooke, for I know thou'rt too fine a gentleman
to be at fault; 'tis naught but this wretched afternoon that hath overwrought
her. As for tomorrow, ye must allow me to take ye in the wagon, I greatly
wish to see this Billy Rumbly my own self, for what reasons I scarce need
say, and 'tis not impossible I may be able to help persuade him to our
cause."

Ebenezer gratefully accepted both her offer and a loan of two pounds
sterling, his own resources being exhausted. He charged Mary to inform
him at once of any change in Mrs, Russecks's attitude or the miller's condi-
tion, and departed, leaving McEvoy the unenviable job of protecting the
household against Sir Harry's retribution. He walked alone to the inn, much
troubled in spirit, and was received almost as a hero by a number of villagers
who lingered there for news from the mill Their attitude was one of re-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [683]

strained excitement: to a man they seemed ready for riotous celebration at
the proper news, but they dared not show their jubilation prematurely lest
the miller recover and learn of it. Ebenezer's announcement that as yet
Russecks showed no improvement was greeted with ill-disguised rejoicing,
and the innkeeper himself, an employee of the miller, insisted that the poet
take supper and lodging at the house's expense.

During the meal Ebenezer pondered Mrs. Russecks's strange behavior.
The only theory he could devise to account for both her knowledge of the
state of things at Maiden and her strong adverse reaction to his name was
the not unlikely one that Russecks was affiliated with William Smith the
cooper and Captain Mitchell's sinister traffic in vice; certainly the man's
character was base enough, and his inn was a natural place for that sort of
traffic. At length he mustered the courage to approach the innkeeper.

"I say, friend, have you ever heard of Eben Cooke, that was wont to
call himself Laureate of Maryland?"

"Eben Cooke?" The man's face brightened. "Why, that I have, sir; he's
the wight that runs the Cooke's Point whorehouse with Bill Smith."

The poet's heart tingled; it appeared that his inference had some truth
in it, however imperfectly it explained Mrs. Russecks's swoon, "Aye, that's
the man. But you've ne'er laid eyes on him, have you?"

"Indeed, Sir Benjamin"— thus they had greeted him, having got the
pseudonym from Mary Mungummory, and he'd deemed it imprudent to
undeceive them before he was certain of his ground— "I've met the man but
once, some days since "

Ebenezer frowned, for he had been about to reveal himself. "You say
you've met him?"

"Aye, that I did, sir, just once, almost in the very spot thou'rt standing
now. An average-looking fellow he was, naught to set him off. Folks claimed
he was looking for a wench that had run off from Maiden— one o' the
friskers, don't ye know— but I'll own he made no mention oft to me."

"I see."

The innkeeper grinned. " Twas the Virgin he was after, we all knew well,
and had he come a few days sooner we'd have steered him to her. But by
then she was Lady Rumbly, don't ye know, and de'il the man of us would
lead him to Billy's wife, for all she's a simple whore. 'Twas lucky Sir Harry
wasn't about . * /' In defense of his characterization of Miss Bromly, which
Ebenezer questioned, the innkeeper reaffirmed his conviction that she was
the fugitive prostitute from Maiden. The poet did not insist the contrary,
both because he wished not to> alienate the innkeeper and because he was

[684] ™E SOT-WEED FACTOR

suddenly struck by an alarming notion: could it be that the so-called Church
Creek Virgin was not really Miss Bromly at all, but poor Joan Toast? Noth-
ing seemed to rule out this possibility— as far as he could judge, for example,
no one who knew Joan Toast had seen the unhappy Mrs. Rumbly, and
Miss Bromly' s name might well have been familiar to Joan. Moreover,
certain features of the story definitely argued for the notion: the girl's
competent defense of her chastity (had not Joan, on the night he aban-
doned her, proposed a life of mutual celibacy in London?}, her general
independence and toughness of spirit (which surely did not suggest the
demure Miss Bromly), her understandable confusion of Billy Rumbly with
Henry Burlingame, and, alas, even her final succumbing to abduction by
an Indian. But perhaps the most revealing detail of all was that hysterical
moment when "Miss Bromly" had insisted that her name was Anna Cooke:
Ebenezer's previous explanation of this incident (that in an access of terror
Miss Bromly had turned desperately for refuge to a mistaken impression
of his influence in the Province) now seemed to him quite unsatisfactory;
but that Joan, driven mad with despair, should identify herself not only in
the tavern but in her own mind with the person whose ring she wore, the
person of whom she could very probably have learned to be supremely
jealous— this struck him with a force like that of certainty, and his conscience
groaned at the blow.

But his immediate objective, however trifling by comparison, made it
necessary to postpone these reflections. He changed his mind about reveal-
ing his true identity and came to his point by a different route. " Tis not
really Eben Cooke I am concerned with; I merely wished to test whether
thou'rt a man of the world, so to speak. Now I am a stranger to this province,
friend, but 'tis said a bachelor need no more sleep alone here than in
London, thanks to a string of gay establishments like Maiden. Tis only
natural a man should wonder whether a genial house such as this . . ?

He allowed the innkeeper to complete the clause; the fellow's eyes were
merry, but he shook his head.

"Nay, worse luck, Sir Benjamin; old Sir Harry ne'er durst make a regular
stews o' the place for fear some clever Jack might roger Henrietta for a
whore. She was obliged to work here» don't ye know, whene'er Sir Harry
did."

"So I understand." The poet reluctantly abandoned his theory— some-
what relieved, however, that the inn was not really a brothel, for he scarcely
knew how he would have retreated otherwise from his inquiry.

"All the same, I'd not have ye think there's no sport to be had in Church

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [685]

Creek/' the innkeeper continued. "How would it strike ye if I should say
that the lady ye must apply to is the selfsame lady ye rode in with this noon?"

"Nay!"

"I swear't!" The innkeeper beamed triumphantly. "Her name is Mary
Mungummory, the Traveling Whore o' Dorset—she's but the Mother
Superior now, ye understand—and I'll wager the price of admission she
can find some manner o* Hi, there! Speak of the devil!"

Ebenezer followed the man's eyes and saw that Mary had just entered
the room and was looking worriedly about. He caught her eye, and as she
approached his table the innkeeper excused himself, saluted her cordially,
and declared with a wink that Sir Benjamin had business to discuss with
her.

"I feigned to mistake this inn for a brothel," Ebenezer explained as soon
as they were able to talk, and told her briefly of his hypothesis and its
failure.

"I might have spared ye that fiction, had ye asked me," Mary said. "I
vow, Mr. Cooke, I don't know what hath possessed poor Roxiel"

"Is she worse, then?"

"She is cousin-german to a Bedlamite!" The miller himself, she went on
to say, was no better or worse than before, but Mrs. Russecks, so far from
regaining her composure after Ebenezer's departure, had grown steadily
more distracted and unreasonable: she fell by turn into fits of cursing,
weeping, and apathy; Mary's attempts to divert her with stories of Henry
Burlingamc and Billy Rumbly had only provoked fresh outbursts; Henrietta
herself had been screamed at and banished from the chamber.

"Methinks 'twas not your name that set her off," Mary asserted, "else
why would she treat Henrietta as harshly as she treated you? I'faith, she
ne'er laid eyes upon ye till today, and albeit she'd heard your name—as
hath many another Marylander— she had ne'er mentioned it once to me,
that she was wont to share her priviest affairs with. What's more, she seems
as wroth with herself as with any soul else; she tears her hair, and rakes
her cheeks, and curses the day of her birth! Nay, Mr. Cooke, I am more
persuaded than ever 'tis the shock o* the day's events hath fair unhinged
her, naught more mysterious; but I fear this night she'll fling away the pins
and ne'er hinge back."

Ebenezer was not convinced, but he could offer no more plausible
hypothesis. He called for two glasses of beer, and when Mary had finished
relating her news to the other patrons, he told her of his firm belief that
the Church Creek Virgin was in fact Joan Toast, and reviewed the evi-

[ 686 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

dence supporting it. She scoffed at the notion at first, then listened in
amazement, perplexity, and mounting concern.

"There's naught I can say to rebut ye," she admitted finally, "albeit I
can't see why she pitched on the name Meg Brandy. Still, 'tis as good as
another, I daresay."

"I am convinced 'tis she!" the poet declared, and tears started in his
eyes. " 'Sheart, Mary, what miseries have I not brought on that girl? De-
stroyed by opium, ravaged by pox, raped, abused, abandoned—and brought
now to the state of brutest salvageiy! Would God I might fly to her this
night and beg for retribution! Would Heav'n n

An expression of horror on Mary's face arrested him; looking beyond
him while he spoke as had the innkeeper, she too had seen someone come
in, and her reaction was as frightening to behold as Mrs, Russecks's,
Ebenezer's flesh crawled in sympathy.

"Is't Harry Russecks?" he whispered.

"Dear Christ!" moaned Mary, and, expecting the worst, Ebenezer turned
to see for himself. The new arrival was not Hany Russecks, but a slight
statured gentleman whom the other patrons rose to greet. The poet's heart
sprang up; he moved his mouth to call "HewyJ" and realized just in time
to check himself that this man was not the "Nicholas Lowe** Burlingame
but the Burlingame of St. Giles, grown fifteen years older and tanned by
the Maryland sun: that is to say, not Burlingame at all , . .

" Tis my sweet Charley Mattassin come from the dead!'* Maty cried
aloud.

"Nay, Mary," Ebenezer whispered. "Tis Billy Rumbly!"

Everyone in the room was startled by the outburst- Rumbly himself broke
off his salutions and looked over with a puzzled smile* Two of his friends
murmured something, perhaps apologies, but he ignored them and came
towards the poet's table, where, still smiling, he bowed slightly to Ebenezer
and addressed the ashen-faced woman.

"I beg your pardon, madam, but I must know whether you did not speak
the name Chen-ley Mattassin just then." His voice, Ebenezer observed, was
of the same timbre as Burlingame's, but the accent was more continental
than English. This, together with his flawless dress, coppered skin, and
punctilious demeanor, did indeed give him the air of a foreign prince in
mufti— which in fact, the poet reminded himself, he was*

"Thou'rt the breathing image or thy brother!" Mary replied, and began to
weep unashamedly. The other patrons came over to see what was the
trouble; Billy Rumbly politely requested that they permit him to learn for

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 687 ]

himself, promising to satisfy their curiosity as soon as he could, and they
retired,

"May I sit down with you, sir? I thank you. Now, my dear lady "

"Pray let me explain, sir," Ebenezer ventured. "Tis a most happy
coincidence that brought you hither tonight!"

"I quite agree/* said Billy Rumbly. "As for explanation, there may be no
call for one: my dear lady, can it be thou'rt Miss Mary Mungummory?"

Mary's astonishment was followed immediately by apprehension. "Now,
Mr. Rumbly, ye mustn't think hard o' me; I swear "

"That you had naught to do with Mattassinemarough's death? Let me
swear, Miss Mungummory, that none save Mattassin had aught to do with
Mattassin's death. He destroyed himself— I can quite appreciate that fact
—and for all his fits of contrary passion, I know he died with your image
in his heart/' He smiled. "But say, how is't you knew I was his brother?
Merely by reason of a certain likeness betwixt us?"

Mary was still too taken aback to muster a coherent answer, and so
Ebenezer declared, "We've heard the tale of your adventures from the
trapper Harvey Russecks, sir "

"Ah, dear Harveyl A consummate gentleman! Then thou'rt aware I was
formerly called Cohunkowprets, the Bill-of-the-Goose; yet that doth not
quite account for all" .

"My business will explain the rest/' Ebenezer said. "I am in Church
Creek expressly to deliver you a message from the Tayac Chicamec/'

For the first time, Billy Rumbly's composure was ruffled: his brow con-
tracted, and his eyes flashed in a way that chilled the poet's blood, so often
had he seen that angry flash in Burlingame's eyes. He felt exactly as he
imagined one might feel who had annoyed some emperor of the East.

"The Tayac Chicamec hath no messages that I care to hear/' he said
dangerously.

"Haply not, sir/' the poet granted at once, "yet I must tell you that as
a gentleman you cannot refuse to hear me: I swear to you that the lives of
every man, woman, and child of this province are in your hands!"

Billy Rumbly fixed his attention on the glass of beer brought to him by
the innkeeper; his anger seemed to have hardened into stubbornness.

"You speak of the coming war. I do not think of it/'

Ebenezer had anticipated this difficulty and was not unprepared to deal
with it. He sighed as though resigned to the Indian's obduracy. "Very well,
sir, I shan't trespass farther on your good nature, I only hope my friend-

[688] TEE SOT-WEED FACTOR

ship with your brother Burlingame will make him less unreasonable than

you."

The remark had its intended effect: Billy grabbed his hand and stared
open-mouthed at him, as if scarcely daring to believe his ears.
"What cruel stratagem of my father's is this?"

"The strategem is mine, sir, to persuade you to hear me out on a number
of urgent matters; but what I said is nonetheless true. As 'twas my pleasure
to inform the Tayac Chicamec, your younger brother, Henry Burlingame
Third, is neither dead nor lost; he was my tutor in England for six years
and at present is not many miles from this spot" Despite his fear of
alienating the man, who rather intimidated him as well, his terrific re-
sponsibilities caused Ebenezer suddenly to lose patience. "Damn you, sir,
put by your skepticism; 'tis mankind's side I'm on, not Chicamec's! Do you
know this ring? Aye, 'tis the ring of Quassapelagh, that he gave me for
saving his life whilst he was hiding in the cliffs. Ah, you've heard that tale
before? Then you know that the wight I left to serve him also owed his
life to me— a trussed-up Negro slave named Drepacca, that I believe hath
been a friend of yours! Do you think I'll beg you to save my companions'
lives by leading that monstrous rebellion? I come here with a plan, sir, not
a plea; a plan to save both English and Ahatchwhoops!" He paused to
regain his self-control and concluded in a calmer tone, **What's more, I
wish to speak with you as one gentleman to another with regard to your
wife, who I have reason to believe is a woman very precious to me, and if
after all this you need still more evidence of my good intention, know that
we may speak here at length without fear of interruption by your enemy
the miller Russecks: he is lying this moment at death's doorsill after a bout
with me and my companion this afternoon."

Billy Rumbly was flabbergasted by this catalogue of marvels. "Great
Heavens, sir, you leave me breathlessl My father, my wife, my long-lost
brother— thou'rt setting my world a-spin!" He laughed. " Tis clear I mis-
apprehended you, and I humbly beg your pardon, Mr. "

"Cooke; Ebenezer Cooke, of Maiden." The poet was relieved to observe
that the name apparently meant nothing to Billy Rumbly.

"Mr. Cooke, sir." The Indian shook his hand warmly, "May I say at the
outset, Mr. Cooke, that gossip to the contrary notwithstanding, my wife is
as dear to me as you declare she is to you, and her condition (which I
gather thou'rt aware of) is a matter of gravest concern to me* In fact, 'twas
to seek advice from Mrs. Russecks on that subject I drove hither this eve-
ning—for which praise God!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 689 ]

Mary, having by this time got the better of her emotions, explained that
Mrs. Russecks was indisposed as a result of the afternoon's contretemps,
the details of which could better be saved for another occasion, and excused
herself to return to the patient's bedside.

"If ye still mean to call on Mrs. Rumbly," she said to Ebenezer, "we'll
ride out first thing in the morning."

"Nay," Billy Rumbly protested, "you must be my guest tonight, sir, and
tell me these wonders at your leisure; I shan't have it otherwise! And you,
Miss Mungummory, if you really must go now, take my sympathies and
regards to Mrs. Russecks and tell her I'll consult her another time; but you
and I must speak together very soon about Mattassin— tomorrow, perhaps?
I've much to ask and much to tell!"

Almost too carried away to speak, Mary managed some sort of acknowl-
edgment and left the inn. Billy watched her intently until she was gone
and then shook his head.

•"Til wager she was beautiful once! And even now, despite all—I don't
presume to understand her, Mr. Cooke, but I quite understand my brother,
I believe." He turned to the poet \vith a smile. "Now, sir, what say you?
If your business with regard to my wife is not to duel for her affections,
let's set out at once for Tobacco Stick Bay; 'tis but four miles down the
road, and I've a fair team to fetch us. Astonishing, this business about my
brother!"

Ebenezer was altogether charmed* He had not suspected how deep was
his anxiety at the prospect of encountering Billy Rumbly until now, when
the man's amiability removed it. It was like meeting Henry Burlingame
again after a long and discouraging separation— but a Burlmgame whose
formidability was not ambivalent; whose benevolence was unequivocal; in
short, the gay, efficient Burlingame who had come to his rescue once in
Magdalene College. There still remained the task of inducing him to save
Bertrand and Captain Cairn, and the rather more ticklish problem of what
to do about Joan Toast; but in the presence of Billy Rumbly— his princely
animation, his mannered power— Ebenezer could not feel pessimistic, much
less despairing. On the contrary, his flagging spirits soared; his face grew
flushed with the ardor of gratitude, the warmth of reciprocal good feeling;
he felt, what he had felt of no man before, that he could embrace this
Billy Rumbly as a maiden her rescuer— which feeling, in the light of certain
shocking declarations of Henry's, made him blush all the more alarmingly

He assented to the proposal While he donned his greatcoat, Bjlly Rumblj
(who had never removed his own), declared to the house that Mis:

[690] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Mungummory's earlier commotion had been due to a simple case of mis-
taken identity: she had taken him for his late brother, Charley Mattassin,
the misguided fellow who had been hanged for the murder of Mynheer
Wilhelm Tick and family. Ebenezer was surprised at the man's candor, but
Billy apparently knew his audience: although the revelation shocked them,
their murmurs seemed commiserative rather than hostile.

"Now," Billy cried, "having blessed your wives with some gossip, let me
bless you gentlemen with a dram!" When the drinks were distributed among
the admiring patrons, he purchased in addition a "rundlet for the wagon,"
declaring that the day Sir Harry Russecks broke his head must not go un-
celebrated. This sentiment was affirmed with loud hurrahs, and when the
two men made their good nights and mounted Billy's wagon, Ebenezer
could not but thrill at the knowledge that he was envied by everyone in the
tavern.

They paused briefly at the mill, where he introduced McEvoy to the
object of their mission, announced his current plans, and learned that while
Mrs. Russecks had finally been got to sleep, there was no change whatever
in the miller's condition; then they set off westward along a dark and narrow
path, actually no more than parallel wagon-ruts through the woods. The
night was frosty and still; through the trees the poet spied the great
triangle of Deneb, Vega, and Altair, though the constellations to which
they belonged were obstructed from view.

"Our little drive takes half an hour," Billy said. "If 1 may isquest it, spare
me the message from my father till later, as I can estimate its substance
out of hand. But I must hear about this gentleman who claims to be my
brother, and methinks 'twere better we spoke our minds on the subject of
my wife ere we arrive. Yet, stay: we durst not essay these weighty matters
with dry throats; the first thing to do is take Lady Rundlet's maidenhead!"

"Marry," Ebenezer laughed, "thou'rt more a twin than a common brother
to Henry Burlingame! How oft have I burned to hear some news he had
for me, or tell him news of my own, and been obliged to sit through a
whole chine of pork ere he'd give me satisfaction!"

They sampled the rundlet, and the good white Jamaica scalded the poet's
innards most gratifyingly. Both the Indian and himself had availed them-
selves of lap robes, which, together with the ruin and the absence of wind,
kept them as comfortable as if the month were April instead of latest
December. The team stepped leisurely in the frozen path, blowing twin
clouds of steam at their chests, and the wagonwheels creaked and crunched
with a pleasing sharpness, Ebenezer permitted his body to rock with the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 69! ]

motion of the springs; the task of relating once again the story of Burlin-
game's quest and his own intricate history had previously appalled him,
but in these circumstances it seemed a pleasant labor. He sighed as he
commenced, but it was the sigh of a man certain that his story will give its
bearers unusual pleasure. Making no mention of. his doubts, reservations,
disappointments, and astonishments, he told of Burlingame's rescue by
Captain Salmon; his boyhood as sailorman, gypsy minstrel, and Cambridge
scholar; his tenure at St. Giles in the Fields and the twins' affection for
him; his adventures in the provinces as political agent and unwilling pirate;
his rescue of the Russecks ladies; his vain endeavors to discover his parentage;
and the poet's recent solution of that mystery.

"The question/' he asserted rear the end of his relation, "was who came
'twixt Sir Henry and Henry the Third, and how my friend came to be light-
skinned as any Englishman, when neither Sir Henry's Privie Journa.il nor
Captain John Smith's Secret Historie referred to any Lady Burlingame. E'en
that last installment of the Historie, that your people call The Book of
English Devils, did not resolve these questions, inasmuch as any offspring
of Sir Henry and Pokatawertussan must needs be a blend of English and
Ahatchwhoop — as is the Tayac Chicamec, in fact."

" Tis as much a mystery now as erst, for all I grasp it," Billy confessed.
*Tet I have no doubts this fellow is in sooth my brother. Miraculous!"

"Aye, and no less so is the chance that gave me the key." He told of his
visit with Burlingame to the Jesuit Thomas Smith in Talbot County, who
before being obliged to surrender his portion of the Secret Historie had
entertained them with the tale of Father FitzMaurice. "When I spied
Father Joseph's chests in the house of the Tayac Chicamec and learned the
King had wed that martyr's offspring, I had the answer: 'tis by decree of
the Law of Averages their union should have issue not alone like thyself,
who have the same commingled blood as both thy parents, but also pure-
blooded Indian and pure-blooded English, in equal number. In short,
Mattassin and Henry Burlingame: the one as much Ahatchwhoop as Pok-
atawertussan, the other no less English than Sir Henry." He smiled at his
host's amazement* "If thou'rt surprised, how much more so will Henry be,
that hath given up his quest as fruitless!"

"What a gift you have presented me!" Billy exclaimed quietly. "A brother,
to replace poor MattassinI I am forever in your debt, sir! But what is his
trade at present, that hath plied so many in the past, and where might I
find him? For I mean to seek him out at once, whether in Cambridge
Maryland or Cambridge England/'

[ 692 } THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

With his imminent plea for Billy's assistance in mind, Ebenezer replied
that Burlingame was still very much engaged in provincial politics as an
agent for Lord Baltimore, in whose service he had jeopardized his life time
and again for the cause of justice. It was difficult to praise as anti-revolution-
ary a man who had lately changed allegiance to John Coode (and who for
all Ebenezer knew might be the arch-rebel and insurrectionist himself), but
the poet reasoned that Billy Rumbly would be more likely to assent to a
plan of which he believed his long-lost brother would passionately approve.

"As to where he is now, I am not certain, for his home is where'er the
cause of civilization leads him. But my desire to find him is no less urgent
than your own, for I know well he'd gamble his life to prevent a massacre."
Here, though he had promised to save the story, he could not resist telling
of the perilous circumstances under which he had learned about the coming
attack, and of Chicamec's ransom terms for Bertrand and the aged sea
captain. "He wants a son with the power of Quassapelagh and Drepacca to
lead the Ahatchwhoops in the insurrection. My prayer is that you or Heniy,
if not the twain of you, will deceive him in the name of peace and good
will; take your place as King of the Ahatchwhoops and use your influence
for the good of red man, black man, and white man alike. Twere not
beyond question, methinks, if only you "

"Ah, sir, your pledge, your pledge!" Billy held up his hand and pretended
to scold, but it seemed to Ebenezer that the digression had served its
purpose. "Let us proceed to the subject of my wife. Before you speak your
business, may I assume thou'rt acquainted with the story of our-— courtship?'*

"Aye, from Harvey Russecks and from Mary Mungummory, who had it
from Sir Harry's wife."

"Both excellent sources, Then you doubtless know I share your alarm at
Miss Bromly's self-imposed degradation. I am not yet either a Christian or
a legal denizen of the Province, sir, and thus cannot properly many her as I
wish to. But she would have none oft e'en were't possible; she wishes no
more than the simple Ahatchwhoop rite I performs—the which neither I
nor the laws of Maryland honor where one of the parties is English."

"Then in reality she is not your wife at all, save in the spirit of Common
Law?"

Billy acknowledged that this was unhappily the case, and confiimed
Harvey Russecks's report that Miss Bromly was in no way the victim of
coercion. "I freely own, what you know already, that I was prepared to
ravish and abduct her after the old Ahatchwhoop manner I hid in the
woods near Sir Harry's mill and brought her to the window by means of

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 693 ]

certain noises, whereupon I revealed myself to her sight. The object of all
this is to terrify the victim, but so far from swooning away, Miss Bromly
came out to me alone, and when I offered to attack her— ah well, 'tis enough
to swear no attack was necessary: she came with me of her own choosing
and of her own choosing remains. Moreover, for all my pressing her to live
like a proper gentlewoman, she hath transformed herself into a salvage-
nay, worse: into a brute, that neither speaks nor grooms itself! You have
heard tales that I torture her over the fire? I swear to you that I would not
willingly harm a hair of her head, but she hath learned somewhere that
Indian husbands are wont to truss a shrewish wife near a green-wood fire,
to cure their ill temper, and she obliges me to rope and smoke her in like
manner above the hearth,"

Ebenezer clucked his tongue. "Alas, poor woman!"

Billy regarded him carefully and gave the reins a little snap. " Tis with
reason I tell you these things, my friend, I would imagine there hath been
some adverse sentiment regarding Miss Brornly and myself; for aught I
know, despite your cordial air you may be her brother or her betrothed,
come to take revenge for her abduction— she tells me naught of her former
life or past connections." He did not mean to suggest, he went on to say,
that he was devoid of responsibility in the affair: whatever Miss Bromly's
past, it was he who had in ignorance assaulted her in Russecks's tavern and
set out deliberately to ravish her afterwards; it was not impossible that her
current state was a deranged one caused by the shock of his attacks. How-
ever, he dearly loved her and wished her well, and was willing to do anything
to improve her condition or otherwise discharge his responsibility.

So disarmed was Ebenezer by the man's frank and friendly attitude that,
though the thought of Joan's degradation stung him to tears, he could not
muster anger against her abductor, "More virtuous men than I may call
you to account/' he said instead. "Only tell me this: doth the girl wear any
sort of ring?"

"A ring? Aye, she hath one, that she kisses and curses by turns but will
not speak of. Tis a silver seal of sorts: methinks 'twas designed to fend off
evil spirits, for it hath the word ban or bane around the seal: B-A-N-N-E,"

For a moment Ebenezer was puzzled: then he recognized the anagram
on Anne B. Billy had merely begun with the wrong letter. "Ah God, 'tis as
I feared! I am more than the girl's betrothed, Mr. Rumbly; I am her hus-
band, and I came hither, among other reasons, to save her from your
clutches! Howbeit, I am persuaded thou'rt even less to blame than you

[ 694 I T™ SOT-WEED FACTOR

imagine: 'tis I, above all others, who am responsible for Joan Toast's sorry
state— that is her true name, not Meg Bromly, and if you truly love and
pity her, 'tis you should punish me, not vice versa." His former sense of
well-being entirely flown, he apprised Billy of the history of his relation-
ship with Joan Toast and his crowning injustice to her, to which he attrib-
uted her flight from Maiden and her current distracted state.

The Indian attended with great interest and sympathy. "You must for-
give me if this question is improper, sir," he said, when the poet was
finished. "I believe I understood you to say that albeit you married the
woman thou'rt yet a virgin, did I not? Remarkable! And yet methinks you
implied that Miss Toast, or Mrs. Cooke— how doth a gentleman say it?—
that you are perhaps not the only man who hath enjoyed her companion-
ship, and that some others, let us say, were not so tender of her honor as
were you ... Is that correct, or have I misconstrued your words?"

Ebenezer smiled. "No need to step lightly, sir. In London she was a
whore, albeit an uncommon principled one; 'twas as a whore she sailed to
Maryland, on a whore-ship, and was raped by a horrendous Moorish giant;
and 'twas as a whore she spent her nights in the Maiden curing-house,
poxing six- or eight-score Indians every month! Tis safe to say she's no
more a virgin than was your brother's Miss Mungummory/'

"I see," Billy murmured, but his frown suggested that he was not alto-
gether satisfied on the matter. "And of course thou'rt quite certain of these
things?"

The poet could not suppress a certain grim amusement* "Belike thou'rt
new to the ways of cultivated ladies, sir: a clever tart may whore herself
to the very gate of Hell and then sell Lucifer first go at her maidenhead.
It happens every day in London."

"Indeed. And yet the ring seems certain proof . . ." He allowed the
sentence to trail off in vague perplexity. "Hi, here's an end to speculation:
yonder stands my cabin."

The path had brought them out of the woods into a sizeable cleared
field bounded on the north by a narrow bay. On the near end of the water-
front stood a cabin, dimly lit, and several outbuildings. As they stabled the
team and approached the house, Ebenezer grew increasingly nervous at the
prospect of confronting Joan Toast; the most honorable course, he decided,
was simply to present himself, humbly and without excuse, and leave the
first reaction to her— whether it be murder, tears, or apathy—before ventur-
ing any sort of explanation*

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 695 ]

At the doorstep Billy Rumbly stopped and laid a hand on the poet's
shoulder, "Let us quite understand each other, my friend: is it your intention
to take my — that is, your wife, I suppose— is it your intention to take her
from me for her own good?"

'That is my intention/' Ebenezer admitted.

"By force, if need be?"

"I am neither armed nor inclined to violence, sir; my only weapon is
persuasion, and 'tis not likely she'll even listen to me. Nor are you obliged
to invite me in, under the circumstances; I'll not bring suit."

Billy chuckled. "Thou'rt a noble fellow! Very well, then, since we both
love the woman and both feel answerable for her condition, let us both put
her improvement above all personal considerations: we will put our sepa-
rate cases and leave the choice to her. Belike she'll wash her hands of the
twain of us!"

Ebenezer agreed, charmed anew by the civilization his host had acquired
in so short time, and they entered the cabin, A single candle flickered near
the door, and on the hearth the fire had burned to its last few coals.
Ebenezer glanced around in vain for Joan Toast; the room was obscure and
cold.

"Yehawkangrenepof Billy called, and explained in an undertone, "She
obliges me to call her by that name. Yehawkangrenepo!"

Now came a grunting and stirring from a straight-backed wooden bench
before the fire; a woman sat up, her back to the door, and commenced
rubbing her eyes and scratching in her wild dark hair. Her condition had
indeed deteriorated: her shift was ragged, filthy stuff, and she grunted and
scratched about her person like a jackanapes picking fleas. Ebenezer felt
faint at the wretched spectacle; he perspired, and his courage faltered. Then
the creature scratched her head again, rising from the bench as she did so,
and the candle glinted briefly from her silver ring. The flash was barely
perceptible, but it blinded the poet altogether to his resolve. He ran to throw
himself at her feet.

"Joan Toastl Ah Christ, how I have wronged thee!"

At the sound of his voice the girl gasped; at sight of him lunging toward
her she screamed and caught at the bench-back for support. And then it was
Ebenezer's turn to moan and stumble, for despite her changed appearance,
the flickering candlelight, and the tears that made his vision swim, he knew
immediately when she turned that Billy Rumbly's mistress was neither Joan
Toast nor Miss Meg Bromly, but his sister Anna.

16: A SWEEPING GENERALIZATION IS PROPOSED
REGARDING THE CONSERVATION OF CULTURAL
ENERGY, AND DEMONSTRATED WITH THE AID OF
RHETORIC AND INADVERTENCE

WHETHER FROM DESUETUDE OR ACCESS OF SURPRISE, AFTER HER INITIAL

scream Anna's voice quite failed her. Brother and sister embraced in vast,
unself-conscious relief at having found each other again, but even as
Ebenezer comforted himself with her name and explained to bewildered
Billy Rumbly, between sniffs and sobs, that she was his twin sister and not
his wife, he felt her stiffen in his arms. At once his memory surrendered to
the dreadful things he had learned from Burlingame, as well as the story,
now newly appalling, of the Ahatchwhoop prince's courtship; the embrace
became awkward; he made no effort to detain her when she pushed free of
him and collapsed in tears on the bench.

"She is in sooth your sister?" Billy asked.

The poet nodded.

"What about the ring?"

Hot with shame, Ebenezer explained that it had been hers to begin with,
that she had presented it to him upon his departure from London, and
that he in turn had given it to Joan Toast, from whom Anna had apparently
retrieved it in some manner. "You must try to understand," he concluded,
speaking with difficulty. "This is a painful moment for both of us ... I
can't explain just yet . . ."

"There will be time," Billy said. "For the present, my company is burden-
some to all; I shall bid you adieu now and return in time for breakfast"

"Nay!" Anna suddenly found her voice, to Billy's surprise, and shook her
head. The tears had marked couises through the dirt on her face. "This
man is my husband," she declared to Ebenezer.

"Quite so/' the poet murmured. "Tfc I must go"
^ "I shan't allow it," Billy said firmly. "Whatever the breach betwixt you,
'tis a family matter and must be put right. In any case I've meant for some
time to sleep in the barn: I have cause to believe a thief hath been pilfering
from it lately." The pretext was unconvincing, but it went unchallenged.
Billy laid his hand affectionately on Anna's head "Prithee mend the family

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 697 ]

fences with forgiveness and good will; 'tis a great pity for brother and sister
not to love each other. Nay, raise up your eyes! And you, sir: I am in your
debt already for arousing this woman to speech, and more than thankful
for the chance that hath enabled me to repay your gift of a brother with like
coin. I beg you only to remember our agreement, as I shall: in the morning
you must tell me the news from Bloodsworth Island, and we shall see what
is to be done on every head."

Anna hung her head and said nothing; Ebenezer too, though embarrassed
by his own unwillingness to protest, was so eager for private conversation
with his sister that he permitted Billy to make up the fire in the cabin and
then leave for the cheerless barn. He scarcely dared look at Anna; just the
thought of her condition made him weep. For awhile they sat on opposite
ends of the bench and stared into the fire, occasionally sniffing or wiping
their eyes*

"You have been to Maiden?*' he ventured at last. From the corner of
his eye he saw her shake her head negatively,

*'I met a Mr. Spurdance at the wharf in Cambridge . . ."

"Then you know my disgrace. And you must have encountered . . . my
wife there too, since you have your ring again," His throat ached; the tears
ran afresh, and he turned to Anna with great emotion. "I was obliged to
marry her or perish of my seasoning, as our mother did; but 'twas not her
doing, Anna; you mustn't think ill of her, Tis true she is a whore, but she

followed me to Maryland out of love " Again he faltered, remembering

Burlingame's assertion that Anna's motive was the same, "Tis on my
account she hath the pox and is a slave to opium; she suffered unimaginable
indignities to be with me, and nursed me back to health when I was ill, nor
made any claim on me whatsoe'er-- not e'en upon my chastity, I swear'tl
Her one wish, when all was lost, was that we fly together to London and
live as brother and sister till her afflictions carried her off; to this end she
gave me six pounds that , , . that father had given her across the Bay, not
knowing she was my wife, and . . , and went to earn six more in the curing-
house, for her own passage! And I, Anna— I betrayed that saintly woman
most despicably! I stole away alone; abandoned her to die uncared forl Tis
I you must despise, not poor Joan Toastr

"Despise?" Anna seemed surprised. "How can I despise either of you,
Eben? Twas through deception you lost Maiden, and honor as well as
necessity required your marriage* I wish you had not abandoned her— 'tis
a hellish thing to be alonef"

She found it necessaiy to pause for some moments after this observation

[ 698 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

in order to regain control of her feelings. Then, speaking carefully and
avoiding his eyes, she asked how it happened that he was not in London.
What had brought him to the cabin? Had he known she was in Maryland?
Had he heard the gossip in Church Creek about Miss Bromly? What had
led him to believe that she was Joan Toast? Did he understand that she had
loved Henry Budingame for a dozen years and had come to Maryland
hoping to marry him? Did he appreciate that it was Bertrand's terrible
news, and Mr. Spurdance's, and Joan Toast's, and her despair at ever find-
ing either Henry or her brother, and the shock of being assaulted by a
savage who miraculously resembled Burlingame, that had brought her to
her present state? She dissolved in tears of shame. Ebenezer took her hand,
but made no attempt to answer the questions; the important ones were
rhetorical anyhow, and the very tone of her voice belied the assertions im-
plicit in them.

"My story will take hours to repeat/' he said gently, "and I've been
telling divers parts to divers people these two days till I am weary oft
Ffaith, Anna, there is so much to say! You wept once when we were first
separated for an evening and declared we'd ne'er catch up to each other
again— I little dreamt the full import of that remark! Now 'tis no matter of
hours or rooms that parts us; 'tis as if we were on twin mountaintops, with
what an abyss between! We shall span it ere we leave this cabin, though it
take a week of explanation— how fine a gentleman Billy is to give us some
hours to make beginnings!— but methinks 'twere better to hear first what
passed 'twixt you and Joan, and what the state of things at Maiden is, now
Father's there, for the smallest detail of my story may want an hour's gloss."
By way of example he declared that the resemblance of Billy Rumbly and
Henry Burlingame was no more miraculous than that of any other pair of
brothers; nor, would he explain this staggering proposition until he had
heard his sister's story. Anna was almost dumb struck; she pleaded for more
information, but Ebenezer was adamant

"Please," he said, "have you not seen Henry at all? I must know these
things ere I commence."

"Not at all/' Anna sighed, "nor hath anyone in Cambridge or St Mary's
City: the name is foreign to them." And resigning herself to the postpone-
ment of her questions, she told of her great loneliness in St. Giles, her
growing fear that Burlingame would never succeed in discovering his
parentage (which discovery, she declared, he had made prerequisite to their
marriage), and her final determination to leave their father to his querulous-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 699 ]

ness, join Ebenezer at Maiden, and either persuade Burlingame to abandon
his research or else assist him in whatever way she could.

At this point Ebenezer interrupted; turning her face to his he said,
"Dearest Anna, don't feel shame in your brother's presence! This bridge of
ours must have piers of love and candor; else 'twill fall." What was on his
mind was the love which she was alleged to feel for him, and about which he
thought it imperative to reach an understanding from the first; having
invited her to confess it, however, he suddenly recalled Burlingame's
assertion that Anna herself was at most only dimly aware of her strange
obsession and possibly altogether oblivious to it. Her look of bewilderment
seemed to confirm this assertion, and the poet was covered with confusion.
"What I mean/' he added lamely, "matters once reached a pass where
Henry judged it necessary to take me altogether into his confidence ... I
being your brother, after all . . , and in sooth, I have learned some things

about him that you " He could not go on; Anna blushed as deeply as

he and veiled her eyes with her hand.

"And thou'rt aware that my husband resembles him in every particular/'
she said. "In short, I am no less virginal than thyself, and no more in-
nocent"

"Let us speak no more of H" Ebenezer begged.

"One more thing only/' She removed her hand and regarded him seri-
ously. Ebenezer felt certain that she was about to confess her unnatural
passion— a prospect the more alarming because of his suspicion, vouched
stoutly for by Burlingame, that to some extent he shared it— but instead
she declared that he must not think her naiVe with regard to Henry Bur-
lingame* Hadn't she seen that he took his deepest pleasure in the two
together? Hadn't he revolted her time and again at St. Giles by his amorous
disquisitions on everything from asparagus-spears to bird dogs of both sexes?
"Methinks 'tis easier to know another than to know thyself," she said.
'There is little in Henry's character that is foreign to me." She smiled
for the first time and blushed at a sudden recollection, "Dare I tell you
something he neglected to? I asked him, ere the twain of you left Lon-
don, wherefore you made so much of your virginity, when I longed so to
have done with mine! And I said farther that were you he, the both of
us would put an end to innocence/'

Ebenezer shifted uncomfortably.

"His reply/' Anna continued, watching Ebenezer's face, "was that you
harbored in your breast a grand and secret passion for one woman that the
world denied you, and had liefer remain a virgin than take second choice!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"That is true to some extent/' the poet granted. "Howbeit, 'twas not so

much the ivorfd that denied me Joan Toast, as John McEvoy, and "

"Stay, I did not finish. I shall confess, Eben, Henry's news inspired me
with inordinate jealousy, albeit I knew we each would marry soon or late.
Tis that we had been so close, you know ... In any case, I demanded to
know the name of this lady who had writ such a patent on your heart, and
why you'd ne'er confided in your own dear sister that once knew your every
whim and secret thought. Henry answered that you yourself scarce realized
who she was, but that e'en if you did, the force of custom would still seal
your lips, inasmuch as the object of your passion was— your sister!"

Ebenezer sat bolt upright. "Henry said that? FChrist, there is no end to
the man's nefariousness! Do you know, Anna, he told me the selfsame
thing about you? That your passion for him, unbeknownst to yourself, was
in reality an incestuous one denied its true object? I had learned of your
affair with him, you see— this was before I knew of his impotence— and I
was aflame with rage and envy "

He cut his sentence short, but its implication hung clearly between them
for both to see. The room was filled at once with tension and embarrass-
ment, of a different order from what they had felt before; their positions on
the bench were suddenly awkward; on pretext of scratching her leg, Anna
slipped her hand from under his and averted her eyes.

"So," she said, and was obliged to clear her throat. "It would seem there
was a mustard seed of truth in what he said to us/*

For a time they could speak no more. The silence was painful, but
Ebenezer could imagine no way to terminate it. What was one to say?
Fortunately, Anna came to the rescue: in a mild, deliberate voice, as if no
digression had occurred, she resumed the narrative of her journey from St.
Giles, employing without comment the proposition that her motive force
had been to join Henry Burlingame* The poet's heart glowed.

"I had heard naught of his activities since 1687, when you and ! aban-
doned him in London. Then last spring he approached me as he did you
later on the Plymouth coach, disguised as Colonel Peter Sayer. When I
was finally persuaded of his true identity— which was not soon, he had
altered so!— he told me the tale of his adventures in the provinces, his dis-
covery of certain references to a namesake in Virginia, and the political
intrigues to which he was a party."

Ebenezer questioned her closely on this last subject, confessing his doubts
about Burlingame's good will towards him and, what was vastly more im-
portant, his misgivings about the virtuousness of Lord Baltimore's cause

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ yoi ]

and the viciousness of Coode's. It was then necessary to waive his earlier
agenda and tell of Henry's impostures of both Charles Calvert and John
Coode, and the transfer of his allegiance from the former to the latter;
Bertrand Burton's conviction that Burlingame himself was John Coode; the
evidence suggesting that Coode, Lord Baltimore, Burlingame, and Andrew
Cooke himself— or some combination thereof— were involved in that
deplorable traffic in prostitutes and opium of which Anna had learned from
Benjamin Spurdance; and finally, Ebenezer's own sweeping suspicion that
both Baltimore and Coode either did not exist save in Burlingame's im-
postures, or else existed as it were abstractly, uninvolved in and perhaps
eyen ignorant of the schemes and causes attributed to them.

Anna listened with interest, but professed no great surprise at Burlin-
game's complex, dubious, and often inconsistent behavior. "As to whether
Lord Baltimore and John Coode are real or figmentary," she declared, "I
cannot say, albeit 'twere hard to believe that so general an assumption hath
no truth in't Neither can I say with confidence whether the two are in
sooth opposed or in league, or opposed in some matters and allied in others,
or which hath the right on his side. But I have cause to think that insofar
as Henry hath any genuine interest in these matters, his sympathies are
with neither of those men; nor doth he truly contradict himself by declaring
first for one and then for the other. The man he really admires and serves,
I do believe, is Governor Nicholson/'

"Nicholson!" Ebenezer scoffed. "He is neither this nor that, from what I
hear: he is no Papist, yet he fought for James at Hounslow Heath; he was
Edmund Andros's lieutenant, and so differed with him that the two despise
each other yet; Lord Baltimore chose him to be commissioned Royal
Governor, thinking Nicholson shared his sympathies, but albeit Nicholson
seems concerned with prosecuting Coode, he governs as if Lord Baltimore
did not exist— which, to be sure, he may not/'

Even as he articulated his objection, Ebenezer grew more and more
persuaded of the likelihood of Anna's new hypothesis, until his arguments
began to sound like evidence in its favor. Burlingame had early confided
that his purpose was to play off Coode and Andros against Nicholson to
Baltimore's benefit— that is to say, "both ends against the middle." But was
not Nicholson truly the man in the middle, and Baltimore the extremist?
From all the reports of his impatience with dreamers and radicals, his hard-
headedness, daring, irascibility,, and great efficiency, Nicholson's character
seemed much more likely to appeal to Burlingame than Charles Calvert's.
Moreover, while not an idealist, Nicholson was (now that Ebenezer re-

[ JQ2 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

fleeted on it) perhaps the only person of influence who had actually done
anything to further the cause of culture and refinement, for example, in the
Plantations: he had established the College of William and Mary during his
tenure as lieutenant governor of Virginia, and had avowed his intention to
found a similar institution in Anne Arundel Town, at public expense. Even
the less creditable aspects of the man— his bastard origins, for instance, and
that obscure erotic streak that alienated him from women and gave rise to
rumors of everything from privateering to unnatural practices— Ebenezer
could readily imagine to be attractive in Burlingame's eyes! In short, what
began as a refutation ended as a complaint.

"Why could Henry not tell me this at the outset, as he told you?"

" Tis not mine to answer for him/' Anna said soothingly, "but he did
mistrust your enthusiasm, Eben— as well about virginity as about Lord
Baltimore's commission. You know how he was wont to play devil's advocate
at St. Giles; with Henry one never knows quite where one stands/*

There was little in this explanation to console the poet, but he held his
peace while Anna went on with the story of her passage to St. Mary's City,
her discovery of Bertrand there posing as Laureate of Maryland, her shock
at his account of his own and Ebenezer's misfortunes, and her resolve to
go at whatever cost to her ailing brother's bedside— all of which Ebenezer
had heard previously from Bertrand himself.

"I was obliged to put ashore at Church Creek/* she said, "and hire a
wagon-ride to Cambridge, whence I meant to make my way to Maiden;
but near the wharf at Cambridge I saw a wretched old beggar in con-
versation with spme slattern of a woman, and albeit I had no idea who
they were, I chanced to spy this ring on the woman's hand "

"Ah, God!"

"She was showing, it to the beggarman, and when he laughed at it she
flew into a rage and cried, To Hell with ye, Ben Spurdance! He is my
husband nonetheless, and for aught we know that villain may have been
carrying him off!' " Upon recognizing the ring as her own, Anna said, she
had understood from what Bertrand had told her that the frightful-looking
woman must t?e her sister-in-law, and the reference to Ebenezer's being
carried off by villains had greatly alarmed her. She had gone up to the pair
and introduced herself, whereupon the woman, for all sh* had just been
defending Ebenezer, now cursed him as a coward, a liar, and a pimp, flung
the ring at Anna's feet, and left, declaring she must get back to Maiden
before the new whoremaster, Andrew Cooke, came looking for her. This
news, together with the testimony of Mr. Spurdance (who apprised her of

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 703 ]

his former position at Maiden) that Ehenezer had deserted his bride and
returned with some other gentleman to England, had caused Anna to
swoon away; Mr. Spurdance, apparently more discriminating than Joan
Toast in his hatred, had revived her and told her of the state of things at
Maiden: that the cooper William Smith had transformed it into a den of
sundry vices; that Master Andrew had arrived there with a party of strangers
the day before, much concerned over his daughter's whereabouts and dis-
traught by the news that Ebenezer had lost the estate, and upon seeing
how matters actually stood, had become so enraged as to fall victim to
something like apoplexy. He was temporarily confined to bed, where he
spent his time cursing mankind in general, but as of the hour of Joan's visit
to Cambridge it was not yet clear whether he was actually unable to regain
possession of the estate or whether his wrath was occasioned merely by the
distracted state of his affairs; similarly, it was not known whether or in what
respect he was himself involved in Captain William Mitchell's activities,
but, according to Joan's report, business was going on much as usual at
Maiden.

Ebenezer shook his head. "Marry, what is to become of it?" He described
the circumstances of the court-trial at Cambridge wherein he had innocently
granted Coofce's Point away, and explained that the other man who had
boarded the Pilgrim with him was Burlingame himself, posing as one
Nicholas Lowe of Talbot. "He had seen Father at Captain Mitchell's—
though Father little dreamt it!— and so had heard you were in the Province.
Twas thus we disembarked in St. Mary's City, with the farther reason that
he meant to ally himself with Coode— so he feigned at least, I met Bertrand
there, who told me that Henry himself was Coode and that you were bound
for Maiden, whereupon the twain of us stole away and took ship that night
for Cooke's Point. Twas the night of the great storm that you may remem-
ber, and we've yet to reach our destination— but that tale must wait till
yours is done, inasmuch as it brings us to Billy Rumbly and my reason for
being here. What did you then? Return to Church Creek?"

"Aye," Anna said, "for want of alternatives. I durst not show myself at
Maiden till I learned more about Father's position, nor durst I remain in
Cambridge, or he'd surely hear oft. I begged Mr. Spurdance to say naught
of having seen me, and he promised to pass on whatever he learned, inas-
much as he too hath no small interest in Cooke's Point. Then I took lodg-
ing in Church Creek under Meg Bromly's name, hoping I'd learn ere my
money was gone that it was safe to go to Father or else find some clue to

[ 704 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Henry's whereabouts." The end of her story reduced her again to tears.
"You know the rest. . . ."

Ebenezer did his best to comfort her, though he too was far from tran-
quil. She was somewhat consoled by the news that her tormentor, Harry
Russecks, had been brought low, and her surprise at the unexplained
comradeship of Ebenezer and John McEvoy (whom she naturally supposed
to be in London) also diverted her to some extent, but there remained
more than sufficient cause for anguish. Aside from the fact that the situation
at Maiden, to the best of their knowledge, had not improved, the discovery
that Ebenezer and Burlingame were not forever lost made Anna frightfully
ashamed of her present condition, which only utter despair could justify.
On the other hand, she would not repudiate Billy Rumbly.

"You must remember/' Ebenezer said, "he is not your husband in the
eyes of God or Maryland law, nor e'en by the custom of the Ahatchwhoops,
inasmuch as the union hath not been consummated."

"I shall wed him properly now," Anna replied. "As for the matter of
consummation, 'twere an overnice point in our case!"

Ebenezer declared his considerable affection for Billy, who was so like
his brother in appearance and intelligence, but averred that insomuch as
Anna's condition at the time of choosing him had been far from responsi-
ble, she was under no moral obligation to maintain the connection. "Billy
himself hath vouched for that: the 'bargain' you heard him allude to was
our agreement that thou'rt free to leave or stay, whichever you choose. And
Henry, after all "

He pressed the point no farther, aware that his footing was precarious.
And as he feared, although she chose not to remind him that her devotion
to Burlingame was ambiguous, Anna declared very pointedly, "I have
pledged myself to Billy, Eben; would you have me break by pledge? If
e'er we part, 'twill be at his behest, not mine; I shall be as good a wife to
him as I am able."

Much mortified, Ebenezer said no more; but the subject of his original
mission in Church Creek suddenly seemed more crucial than ever to him.
Since despite their weariness it was unlikely that either of them would be
able to sleep, he proposed that he summon Billy in from the barn and
devote the remainder of the night to exposing his plight and plans. It took
no more than the assertion that innumerable lives were at stake to win
Anna's approval of this proposal, and she insisted on fetching Billy herself.

She did not return at once; Ebenezer spent the uncomfortable interval
sighing at the fire. Among his myriad reflections were a few that he readily

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 7°5 ]

identified as jealous, though he could not banish them: Why did he object,
after all, to a marriage of Anna and Billy Rumbly, who appeared to have
all the virtues and none of the vices of his brother? At that very moment,
no doubt, Billy was expressing his delight at Anna's miraculous change
for the better: what was taking them so long?

When at last the two of them came in, he was obliged to put these feelings
in abeyance, for Billy hurried to shake his hand.

"Your presence hath achieved what I could never," he declared with
great emotion. "Whatever the outcome, my friend, I shall bless you for
bringing her to herself/'

He shook his head in awe at the spectacle of Anna washing her face and
hands in the basin and deploring the state of her hair and clothes. Now that
his mistress was a normal English girl, her presence, and Ebenezer's, seemed
to intimidate him; he proposed to find them something to eat and was
much abashed at Anna's insistence that preparing the food was not a hus-
band's chore.

His discomfiture moved even Ebenezer to amusement and sympathy.
TChrist, Anna, what can be done with this accursed salvage practice of
eating a meal before every conversation?*'

The absence of malice in his raillery had a magical effect: the others
laughed, and Billy was put somewhat at ease; pipes were brought out; a
bottle of wine was discovered in the sideboard. They dined in the best of
humor on cold spareribs and chambre muscatel. Scoffing at the "salvage
practice" just alluded to, Anna recounted with much animation, for Billy's
benefit, the salient points of the evening's conversation, and though her
speech made Ebenezer wonder more than ever what had detained her so
long outside, both men regarded her throughout with the misty eyes of
love,

"Anna Cooke of St. Giles in the Fields!" Billy marveled. "That wants
some getting used to!"

The Indian's subdued, almost awkward voice and manner touched the
poet deeply; he put down as unworthy the notion of somehow telling Billy
about Anna's love for Burlingame. To divert his mind from it he posed to
himself the question whether "cultural energy," so to speak, was conserved
within a group after the fashion that physical energy, according to Professor
Newton, was conserved within the universe. Was there, he wondered, some
unreckoned law of compensation, whereby an access of cultivation on
Billy's part reduced Anna to bestiality, and her improvement, which her
paramour had so devoutly wished, necessarily brought him low? He decided

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

that quite possibly there was, and lost interest in the question. As soon as
the meal was done and fresh pipes were lit he sighed and said, "There was
as pleasant an hour as I've spent since leaving London, but my pleasure is
a guilty one: e'en as I stretch my legs here and McEvoy pays court to his
new mistress, two hostages for our lives are shivering in a hut on Bloods-
worth Island. If I fail in my errand, not only they but haply hundreds and
thousands of others will be murthered/' He looked to Billy for approval
"With your permission, friend, I'll state my business now/'

Billy shrugged his shoulders, so much in the manner of Burlingame that
the wine-cup trembled in Anna's hands. "Methinks I can predict it," he said,
and explained unemotionally to Anna: "What the English call Bloodsworth
Island is at the southern end of this county. Tis a refuge for fugitive Negro
slaves and disaffected Indians from all parts of the Province, who have
formed an alliance for the purpose of driving all white men into the sea,"

Anna was horrified, and more so when Billy added, "They have three
great leaders: the African king Drepacca, whose life your brother once
saved; the Anacostin King, Quassapelagh, who also owes his life to your
brother; and my father, the Tayac Chicamec, to whom, if I be not wide of
the mark, your brother is indebted for his own life/* Ebenezer confirmed
this speculation, and Billy went on to review for Anna—with supplementary
information from Ebenezer about Father Joseph FitzMaurice and the jour-
nals of Captain John Smith and Sir Henry Burlingame— the history of his
parentage and the fate of his two brothers. "My father is very old," he
concluded, "and no match in strength and influence for Drepacca and
Quassapelagh. Besides which, he hath been doubly unhappy in his sons, that
not only are fated ne'er to carry on their line but seem driven as well to
turn their backs upon their people and aspire to the very stars/* Turning
again to Ebenezer he said, "If I may hazard another guess, you and your
party in some wise fell into my father's hands, and you saved your life by
pledging to restore his long-lost son to him, or the son more lately lost, or
both, to lead the Ahatchwhoops into battle. Is that the case?"

"That is the case," the poet admitted. "The Tayac Chicamec is much ag-
grieved by your defection, but what saved us was my news of Henry Burlin-
game. If 'tis not overbold of me to speak of such matters, your grandfather
Sir Henry had clearly learnt some means of rising above his shortcomings on
one occasion, inasmuch as he contrived to get your father on Pokatawertus-
san; now Chicamec believes that just as Sir Henry's defect was transmitted
to his grandsons, so perhaps his magical remedy was transmitted as well "

"The Rite of the Sacred Egg-plant,'* Billy acknowledged with a smile.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [707]

"Methinks 'tis but a vulgar superstition. In any case I know naught oft —
worse luck!"

"Nay, but your brother Henry might, so Chicamec believes, inasmuch as
he shares Sir Henry's blood and pigmentation."

"Whatever this mystery of magical egg-plants/' Anna said carelessly, "if it
hath the effect you mentioned, Henry Burlingame knows no more oft than
doth Billy." At once she realized her slip, and crimsoned.

"Aye, that's plain enough," Ebenezer added quickly, "else he'd likely
have a wife and family by this time, would he not?"

But it seemed clear that Billy had not missed the implication of Anna's
remark, and her expression was unequivocally guilty. He said nothing— -for
one thing, Ebenezer deliberately gave him no opportunity—but his manner
grew pensive, even brooding. No less than Anna, Ebenezer regretted the
slip, for he sensed that it had damaged in advance the appeal he was about
to make. Nevertheless he spoke on brightly, as if nothing had changed,
only avoiding wherever possible any references to Burlingame.

"There is my plight," he declared, "e'en as you guessed it: if I fail to
deliver Chicamec his son within thirty days— fewer than that, now— poor
Bertrand and Captain Cairn will be dismembered and burnt at the stake-
as well as I, for I have pledged myself to return if I fail, and I intend to."

"I am no longer an Ahatchwhoop/* Billy muttered. "Had I wished to
succeed my father I'd not have abandoned him. Nor do I see the virtue of
trading the lives of your friends for those of all the white men in the
Province/'

"The war will come in any case/' the poet insisted, "only Chicamec will
have no hand in waging it. Tis not my object to deliver him a good general,
but to prevent the war itself/'

To this Billy replied, more sullenly yet, that for all he was a deserter,
he had not sunk to the level of treason against his people.

" 'Tis not treason I have in mind," Ebenezer protested, not at all pleased
with the way things were going, "My plan is not to betray the Ahatch-
whoops, but to save them "

Billy bristled, "Do you think your wretched militia is a match for Quas-
sapelagh and Drepacca? By summer the Governor's scalp will hang from
my father's ridgepolel"

"Please, sir, hear me out! If Drepacca makes his treaty with Monsieur
Casteene and the Naked Indians, the English will be harried out of Amer-
ica, and 'twill be no chore to drive the French out after them; I grant that.
But 'tis not the English case I plead: 'tis the case of humankind, of Civiliza-
tion versus the Abyss of salvagery. Only think, sir: what you've acquired in
T/»«o f4»a« Q fnrfmcrKt- wanted two thousand vears and more a-building; 'tis

[yo8] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

a most sweet liquor, is't not? Yet the mash whence man distilled it is two
.dozen centuries of toil and misery! What, will you drink your fill and throw
away the flask, when your people hath such thirst? I grant the English have
used you ill, but to drive them out is to drive yourself back into darkness;
'tis fo throw out the baby with the bath water!"

Billy did not reply.

"Ah well, here is my plan," Ebenezer said resignedly. "Whilst I was in
your father's town I marked a great rivalry betwixt Quassapelagh and
Drepacca; they regard Chicamec as no more than a valuable figurehead, as't
were, and vie with each other to dominate the triumvirate. But the fact is,
neither hath the whole requirement of an emperor, do you think? Quas-
sapelagh hath the loyalty of the Indians, but for all his virtues he falls short
in cleverness and diplomacy; Drepacca is a brilliant fellow, but as yet hath
little strength. . . ."

"Thou'rt a shrewd observer," Billy admitted. "Tis well for them the
Tayac Chicamec is old, for he hath both wit and numbers in his favor."

"Precisely!" the poet exclaimed. "But he is old, and there's our opportu-
nity! Thou'rt his son, and heir to both his genius and his influence; if he
should abdicate in your favor, 'twould be no chore for you to play Quas-
sapelagh and Drepacca against each other, Thou'rt the only one of the
three who can rule alone. And i'faith, Billy, what blessing you could bring
to your people! The power to make war would still be yours, and in the
plain and public face oft any governor in his senses will put an end to
oppressing you; violence will give way to honest negotiation, and our two
peoples may borrow each the best of the other's culture "

"Why do you not apply to your good friend Burlingame instead?" Billy
interrupted. "Belike your sister could hit on some subtle means of persuad-
ing him."

"Ah, dear Billy!" Anna cried. "Fve had no chance yet to explain "

"Apply to Burlingame I shall," Ebenezer broke in, "but not to go to
Chicamec. In the first place he is English by nurture and appearance, a
stranger to your people, and ne'er could win their trust; in the second, he is
close to Governor Nicholson and hath great influence in the provinces; he
can do your cause more good in Anne Arundel Town than on Bloodsworth
Island." He searched his mind desperately for additional arguments.
" 'Sheart, Billy, 'tis not as if you must live there forever! When your position
is secure there'll be no need for your people to hide; you can rule just as
well from here and live as you live now. As for Anna, she hath declared
already "

"Enough," Billy commanded, and rose from the bench. "The hnm<> **v

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 709 ]

longs to Harvey Russecks, not to me; and the woman, as I gather, belongs
to my brother."

"Go to!" pleaded Anna. "I shan't leave you!"

'Then follow me to the town of Chicamec," Billy said coldly. "The
Ahatchwhoop women will tear you to pieces." He made a mocking bow
to Ebenezer. "I congratulate you, sir, on achieving both of your objectives:
your sister now understands that she is no Indian, and I that I am no Eng-
lishman. I shall go back to Bloodsworth Island in a very few days."

Anna burst into tears. "Nay, if thou'rt English no more, then you must
own me for thy lawful wife!"

"On that point, Miss Cooke, the code of the Ahatchwhoops is quite clear:
the Tayac may take as many outland concubines as he pleases, but the blood
of his wife should be untainted. Goodnight."

Ebenezer entreated him not to leave, but Billy (who now demanded
that they call him Cohunkowprets) was adamant. "Tis near dawn now,
and we've yet to sleep," he said. "I shall spend today putting my friend's
property in order; tomorrow we'll return to Church Creek and thence to
Bloodsworth Island."

Forbidding Anna to follow him, he left the cabin, whereupon Anna fell
into a fit of weeping and cursing her inadvertence. Ebenezer's own feelings
were mixed: on the one hand he was genuinely sorry that Billy's pride had
been so injured, and concerned lest his stratagem misfire on that account;
overbalancing these considerations, however, were his joy at finding and in
a sense rescuing his sister, as well as succeeding, so it appeared, in his mission
to save the lives of his companions. It was no easy matter to calm Anna's
distress, but he was assisted by their mutual fatigue; after what seemed like
hours of soothing talk he put an end to her tears, and when the first gray
light appeared she was asleep on the bench*

17: HAVING DISCOVERED ONE UNEXPECTED
RELATIVE ALREADY, THE POET HEARS THE TALE
OF THE INVULNERABLE CASTLE AND ACQUIRES
ANOTHER

THROUGHOUT THE AFTERNOON AND EVENING BOTH EBENEZER AND HIS

sister did their best to regain Billy's friendship, but though his bitterness
seemed to have passed, he held steadfastly to his position and virtually

] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

ignored their presence as he worked about the cabin, until at length they
abandoned their overtures aud joined him in tight-lipped silence. His
taciturnity was not the only change in Billy: overnight, as it were, he had
discarded his mufti and become an Indian again. His English clothes he
had exchanged for matchcoat and buckskin breeches (just as Anna, when
she awoke, had exchanged her ragged shift for a proper English costume);
his movements were those of a woodsman rather than a planter; even his
skin seemed magically to have darkened, as Anna's had quite literally light-
ened under her diligent scouring. It was a difficult day, and Ebenezer wel-
comed the coming of nightfall, when Billy again retired to the bam and
he and Anna talked for hours between their separate pallets in the dark,
much as they had done in childhood. Next morning Billy closed the cabin
and outbuildings, hitched up the team, and drove them silently to Church
Creek. He would not enter the little settlement himself, but stopped a quar-
ter of a mile or so from the inn,

"I'll wait here for one hour by the sun," he announced — the first words
he'd spoken in two days. "Stay with your sister and send your companion to
me if you want the hostages to live."

In vain Ebenezer protested that he had promised Chicaxnec to return in
person; that Anna would be perfectly safe with Mrs. Russecks if the miller
was not entirely recovered; that to send McEvoy in his place would make
him look and feel a coward.

"One minute of your hour is spent," Billy observed, and turned away; to
Anna's farewell he made no reply at all.

It was Ebenezer's intention to approach the village with the utmost cau-
tion, lest Harry Russecks be up and about his business, but upon reaching
the inn he saw McEvoy and a considerable number of others gathered in
plain sight in the nearby churchyard. Anna drew a scarf about her face to
avoid being recognized as the "Church Creek Virgin," and they went over
to the gathering.

"Eben!" McEvoy cried upon recognizing him. "Dear Christ, but it's good
to see ye back! I feared the salvage had done ye to death for stealing his
bride!" He noticed Anna and went pale; "Is't you, Joan?" he whispered.

Ebenezer smiled. "Twas a more eventful journey than I'd supposed,
John: his bride was not Joan Toast but my sister Anna, who is his bride
no longer."

"What in Heav'n!"

"There's no time to explain now." Ebenezer glanced at the activity

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 71 1 ]

around the church door. "Since thou'rt not in hiding, I gather that Sir
Harry is still bedridden."

"Nay, Eben, no longer," McEvoy said seriously. "Thou'rt just in time to
attend his funeral!" The miller, he declared, had never recovered from his
comatose state and had expired during the night after his fall, Mrs. Russecks
was no longer hysterical, but seemed indifferent to the point of numbness;
one was not certain that she quite understood what had happened. Henri-
etta was of course subdued by her mother's reaction, but the villagers were
openly relieved to be rid of the tyrant.

"I share their sentiments/' Anna declared with feeling. "He was a beast!
But I feel sorry for good Mrs. Russecks and Henrietta, who were so kind
to me. Where are they now, Mr, McEvoy?"

McEvoy answered that they were inside the church, where the funeral
was about to commence, and suggested that the three of them go in also.

"You should go/' Ebenezer said to Anna, "but you and I have more
urgent business, John: Billy Rumbly waits for us just round yonder bend,
to go to Bloodsworth Island. We daren't detain him."

Anna excused herself to comply with her brother's suggestion, and Eben-
ezer explained the situation to McEvoy as rapidly as possible. "We can
only pray that Billy will do his best to prevent the war," he said at the end,
"but in the meantime we must rescue Bertrand and the Captain."

"Aye, but what then, Eben? Whither do we go from there?"

"Anna swears that Heniy Burlingame is a lieutenant of Governor
Nicholson's," the poet replied. "Whether he is or not, methinks we should
go to Anne Arundel Town with all haste and apprise the Governor of the
coming insurrection* Beyond that I cannot see," He hesitated, uncertain
how to broach the subject of Billy's ultimatum; but McEvoy took the matter
out of his hands*

44 Twere best only one of us went, Eben, and the other stay here. We
heard rumors yesterday that a famous pirate fellow called Every, or Avery,
is passing through on his way to the head o' the Bay and hath been foraging
for provisions along his route. Tis not likely he'd come so far from open
water, but the folk are up in arms, and the ladies will want some protection.
Besides, ye'H want to be with your sister, will ye not?"

-Ah, John "

*Nay, not a word, now! Ye know how it burthens me to owe my life
to ye, Eben; give me this chance to remit a little on account/'

Ebenezer sighed and confessed that he was not in a position to protest,
inasmuch as Billy seemed to bear him a grudge. He promised to look after

[ ji2 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Henrietta, whom McEvoy frankly admitted love for, and vowed that if the
hostages had not arrived safely in four days he would bring the Maryland
militia to Bloodsworth Island. The funeral service having begun inside the
church, McEvoy decided to leave without more ado; Ebenezer went with
him to Billy's wagon, full of misgivings, saw him off, and returned to the
churchyard.

For all the villagers' excitement, the next few days were happy and almost
tranquil for Ebenezer and Anna by comparison with their recent past. In-
deed, the pirate-scare (based on Governor Nicholson's announcement that
"Long Ben" Avery's ship Phcmsie and Captain Day's brigantine Josiah had
been sighted in Maryland waters) turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
For one thing, the rumor of foraging privateers kept everyone indoors much
of the time and thus, together with the diversion of Harry Russecks's death,
spared Anna no end of embarrassment; by the same token it made it un-
necessary for Ebenezer either to maintain the imposture of Sir Benjamin
Oliver or to disclose his true identity. For another, although Henrietta, dis-
tressed as she was at the news of McEvoy's dangerous errand, was delighted
to see "Miss Bromly" again and soon became fast friends with her, and
although Anna and Mary Mungummory (who was also a houseguest) got
on splendidly together, Mrs. Russecks seemed still much disturbed by the
presence of the twins; Ebenezer sensed that she would probably not have
taken them in as guests had not the other women insisted on male pro-
tection.

Her manner was strange and contradictory: in their company she was
reserved, even slightly hostile, but whenever they ventured outside she
seemed anxious for their safety and was clearly relieved when they returned
uncaptured by pirates. There appeared to be little basis for Ebenezer's
original fear that she abhorred him for his part in the miller's downfall;
she accepted their condolence for her loss but admitted readily that all con-
cerned, herself included, were better off for Sir Harry's demise, and insisted
that neither Ebenezer nor McEvoy were in the least responsible for it— the
man's arrogance, pretentiousness, and jealousy, she avowed, had been his
nemesis. On the other hand, she would listen almost with irritation to the
poet's account of his peregrinations since April last, and once when he was
voicing his joy at being reunited with his sister, she left the room,

"I cannot fathom it," Anna said on that occasion. "She was so gracious
before, and now— 'tis as if the sight of us gives her pain!"

"Nay, child," Mary Mungummory chuckled, "I've long since given up
Roxie as a mystery. None but the good Lord knows how Harry's death

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 713 ]

hath touched her— she hath yet to tell me clearly why she married the brute
to begin with!"

"We must be patient/' Henrietta said. "Try to forgive her, Anna/'

"La, 'tis we must be forgiven/' Ebenezer protested. "Your mother's a
fine judicious soul, and whate'er the affront we've given her, 'tis plainly
no trifle."

Henrietta smiled, "Since we agree 'tis a mystery, let's alter the maxim
to suit the case: Rien comprendre c'est tout pardonner—n'est~ce pas?1'

And there the matter rested, though the poet saw a troubling ambiguity
in the proverb.

By way of posthumous retribution for his boorishness, the villagers re-
solved en masse that Sir Harry's grave remain forever anonymous; with the
consent of Mrs. Russecks, who declared her intention of removing to Anne
Arundel Town in the near future, they dismantled the machinery of the
tide-mill and, in lieu of inscribed granite, marked his resting place head
and foot with the unadorned millstones, as who should say to all posterity:
"No nobleman or knight lieth here, but a nameless miller," Henrietta,
though she made no secret of her joy at being delivered from her father's
despotism, visited the grave dutifully every day during this period, often
accompanied by the twins. Mrs* Russecks would not go with them, pleading
fear of the pirates; to get out of the house they were obliged to unbar the
door, which she then barred behind them, and to re-enter they knocked
three times and offered a password. Similar precautions were taken by most
of the other villagers as well, on whom Sir Harry had been wont to press
grisly stories of his torture at the hands of Captain Pound; on the way home
from the churchyard one saw houses with every window boarded, and Hen-
rietta declared that some people had nailed fast every door in their houses
except one, which was kept heavily barred.

Now Ebenezer could scarcely believe that pirates would come so far up-
river from the Chesapeake, nor had he ever heard of their assaulting a whole
village in the English provinces; nevertheless, the responsibility for a house-
ful of women weighed heavily upon him— the more since he had no weapons
except Sir Harry's old cutlass— and the general mood of alarm was con-
tagious. On the third day of their visit, therefore, while taking tea with
Anna, Henrietta, and Mary Mungummory, he suggested that they follow
the example of the neighbors*

"After all, we're but one man with one sword; if the pirates really should
come hither, they could have at us through two doors and a dozen windows/'

[714] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

For some reason this proposal amused Henrietta, "'Twould make our
house an invulnerable castle, would it not?"

'Very nearly, if you choose to think oft thus. Really, Henrietta, is't so
humorous that Fm concerned for your safety?7'

"Nay, Eben, 'tis not that at all. The fact is, our family hath had unhappy
dealings with invulnerable castles in the past; otherwise my mother would
be no orphan, and belike we'd not be named Russecks at all."

Everyone's curiosity was aroused by this remark; if Mrs. Russecks was an
orphan, whence came her patent of nobility? And what was signified by
this allusion to invulnerable castles? They demanded to hear the story.

"Ah, now, I've sworn not to speak of my family to Eben and Anna "

She smiled mischievously and whispered, "But if Mother's asleep I'll for-
swear myself— 'tis a marvelous tale!"

She tiptoed upstairs to Mrs. Russecks's chamber and returned with the
news that her mother was still napping soundly. "Now I've no idea why all
this hath suddenly become such a deep, dark secret, but when Eben left us
to ride out to Billy Rumbly's, Mother made me swear to say naught of her
family in his presence. Since I'd not dream of going counter to her wishes,
you must swear to me you'll keep her secret. Do you swear?"

They did, much amused by her casuistry, and Henrietta, assuming the
manner of a professional storyteller, began what she called The Tale of
the Invulnerable Castle, as follows:

"Once on a time there lived in Paris a certain Count named Cecile
Edouard, who had the bad judgment to be born into a family of Hugue-
nots . . ."

Ebenezer suddenly frowned. "I say, Henrietta, have you e'er heard
tell "

"Ah, ah, ah!" the girl scolded. "Marry, Eben, thou'rt Laureate of this
wretched province, and you know very well 'tis only a boor will interrupt
a story!"

The poet laughed and withdrew his question, but his expression remained
thoughtful.

"I was just getting to the family scandal," Henrietta said with relish.
"Maman wouldn't mind your knowing this; I've heard her tell it to others
often enough, to mortify papa when he bragged of her nobility. The fact is,
albeit we know Monsieur Edouard was a bona fide count, his ancestry is
lost to history, and there was a scandalous story among the workmen and
servants at Edouardine "

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 7*5 ]

"Dear God, I was right!" Ebenezer cried. He half rose from his chair
with excitement and then sat down again, his features dancing. "Tell me,
Henrietta, was this man your— let me see-your grandfather? And was this
Castle Edouardine here in Dorset County, not far from Cooke's Point?"

Henrietta feigned exasperation. "I declare, Anna, your brother must be
taken in hand! What matter if you've heard the plot already?" she de-
manded of Ebenezer. "Dido knew the tale of Troy, but she had manners
enough to hear't twice from Aeneas, nor e'er broke in with niggling ques-
tions,"

"But you yourself don't realize — "

"Stop him, Anna, or I'll not say another word!"

By now everyone was laughing at Ebenezer's frustration and Henrietta's
mock anger, even the poet himself,

"Very well,'* he said, Til hold my peace. But I must warn you: if your
tale goes whither I guess, I'll steal your thunder with a postscript more
marvelous by half/'

44 Tis your privilege, and may the cleverest liar win. But will you swear
to interrupt me no more, on pain of hearing me read my verses if you do?
Good, then let's return to the family scandal, which you threaten to outdo
with one of your own. I said there was a story that Cecile's mother had been
a Jewess, nor any rich one, either, but a common chambermaid or wash-
woman in a noble Roman house. In the same house there was a Greek
who had once tutored the Marchese's children, but had been reduced to
the post of footman because of his depravity; 'tis said he got the young
Jewess with child ere he was sent packing, and that subsequently she con-
trived to make a conquest of the Marchese himself and prevailed upon him
to raise her bastard son as his own, right there in the palazzol" Henrietta
pointed out that this story shed no light whatever on Monsieur Edouard's
metamorphosis from Roman to Parisian, Catholic to Huguenot, and natural
son to nobleman. Nevertheless, she insisted, for the connoisseur of vulgar
gossip it possessed a certain persuasiveness: its odd particularity had the ring
of truth. As for the mysterious changes of status, she added mischievously,
was not their own Governor Nicholson the Duke of Bolton's bastard, and
had he not enjoyed transmogrifications of faith and place no less astonish-
ing?

"Whatever his origin/' she went on, "we know for a fact he was neither a
hypocrite on the one hand nor a martyr on the other; when the Huguenots
continued to be persecuted even after the Edict of Nantes, he refused to
become a Papist, but fled from Paris to London and joined Oliver Crom-

[•716] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

well's army. Maman says he fought bravely in divers campaigns, but cannot
recollect which ones. In any case he left the Lord Protector's service in
1655, as abruptly as he had joined it, and came to Maryland." She sighed.
"Now here's a weak spot in my Edouardiad, that Eben will surely pounce
upon: the voyage of your proper epical hero like Ulysses or Aeneas is always
fraught with trials, but Cecile— albeit he did sail east to west, as a hero
ought— crossed without incident. He must have got a fortune somewhere in
his past, for he cargoed three ships with naught but furniture, carpetings,
ironwork, plate, flatware, gewgaws, and brummagem oddments for the house
he meant to raise in the Plantations. What's more, he brought his wife
Sophie along, which no epical hero would bother doing, and the rest of his
menage as well: fifteen servants and Maman, his only child, who was seven
or eight years old. The Province was— thirty-four from fifty-five—only
twenty-odd years old itself at the time, and had surely never beheld such a
Croesus as my grandfather. In 1659 the Lord Proprietary— that would be
Cecilius Calvert then— patented him six hundred acres on the Choptank,
which was almost terra incognita then, and he moved across the Bay with
his company and baggage to build a house."

Ebenezer shook his head in wonderment, but not at Henrietta's narrative.
"Nay, Eben, you must wait as you promised," she teased. "What you've
heard is merely the preface, and now the tale proper commences,"

There was among Monsieur's servants, she declared, an old fellow known
only as Alfred, who had been his master's valet as long as anyone could
remember. This Alfred was said to know Cecile more intimately than did
even Madame Edouard herself ("Nor doth this fact surprise me, for there
are things one tells one's inferiors that one would scarcely tell one's
wife . . ."); what 'was surprising was that Alfred's master loathed him.
Cecile, "one gathers," was not such a fool as to be unaware of his own
character, but his position enabled him to punish others for his shortcom-
ings; yet he dared not cashier the valet and have done with it, not only
because Alfred knew so much about him, but also because the servant, de-
spite his menial status, seemed to have been endowed with uncommon
acumen and foresight. 'Thus Monsieur never failed to heed his valet's
counsel, for he was, "like many another man," wise enough to recognize
good sense when exposed to it, if not wise enough to conjure it for himself;
but poor Alfred was ill rewarded for his services, inasmuch as each time
his advice was taken, his master's resentment towards him increased. In fact,
Alfred had been beaten on occasions when his counsel proved particularly
sound.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Now Cecile fell to the task of raising his house with wonderful haste
and gusto. He had made few plans beforehand, but he brought with him
to Edouardine a shallop's-load of- carpenters, cabinet-makers, and even
masons and glaziers, though there was no more stone in Dorset then than
there is now, and his window glass and mirrors were still en route from
London. In six months, whilst the family and workmen lived in cabins,
an imposing wooden edifice was raised, with a large central section and
two wings. Ordinarily such an army could have built the house more
quickly, but it happened that Monsieur Edouard, for all his reputed courage
against more cultivated antagonists, was possessed of a marvelous fear of
salvages; time and again he halted the progress of his house and set his men
to building a stockade fence about the grounds, or clearing away more trees
on his point of land, or constructing earthworks against Indian attacks. Just
how numerous and belligerent were the salvages thereabouts no one knew
at the time, but certainly Alfred could have pointed out to Monsieur the
Count in a moment that such defenses were of the wrong sort altogether.
Howbeit, as I said before, he was the perfect servant; he ne'er durst proffer
advice unless asked for't, and Cecile was too engrossed in building his
palisades, terrepleins> and demilunes, ever to question their utility. In sooth,
Indians were observed in the neighborhood from time to time, apparently
spying on all the commotion, and albeit their motives may have been naught
more sinister than curiosity, still their presence sufficed to send Cecile into a
fresh fit of crenelations, embrasures, and machicoulis.

"When at length the house was finished, save for the window glass, he
loaded Sophie, Alfred, and himself into a small boat and bade another
servant row them some hundred yards offshore, the better to view Edouar-
dine from its noblest elevation*

44 Well, Sophie/ Monsieur demanded (I mean to invent these colloquies
for the sake of interest, if the Laureate hath no objection) —'Well, now,
Sophie,* he demanded, 'what do you say of Edouardine?' And Madame
Edouard replied, * Tis lovely, mon cherj

"'Lovely, you say!' (Can't you see him turning red like Papa, and poor
Sophie lowering her eyes?) 'Lovely, you say! C'est magnifiquel Sans pareill
And my pdwadel Why, we are invulnerable!' And th'en he demanded to
know whether Alfred too regarded Edouardine as merely beau.

" 'The house is superb, Monsieur/ I can hear Alfred saying— very calmly,
you know, *It is truly elegant/

44 'Eh? You think so? That's more to the mark!' "

The whole company— Ebenezer, Anna, and Mary Mungummory— ap-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

plauded Henrietta's lively mimicking of the arrogant Count and his timid
valet.

" 'But if Monsieur will observe ' .

" 'What's that? Observe what?'

" 'I think of the salvage Indians, Monsieur. . . /

" 'Ah, you think of them? Did you hear that, Sophie? He thinks of les
sauvages, doth this Alfred! And do you suppose I think of aught besides,
you idiot? Small chance they have of broaching my palisade!'

" 'None whate'er, Monsieur; but I fear they would not need to broach it
in order to do you injury.'

" 'And how is that, pray? Do you fancy they have artillery?'

"Whereupon Alfred must have cleared his throat and said politely, *I have
heard, Monsieur, that these salvages make use of flaming arrows in siege.
Despite your clearing the trees, they could very well (if they'd a mind to)
stand off yonder in the forest and throw such arrows over the palisade onto
the house— which then must surely take fire, inasmuch as 'tis made of wood.
Monsieur would be obliged to use many men to put out the fire, and thus
leave the palisade weakly manned: the salvages would be upon us in short
order. Always assuming, of course, that they are hostile.'

" 'Ridiculous! Preposterous!' I daresay Cecile came nigh to striking the
valet for having mentioned such a possibility, and Alfred surely pressed the
point no farther. But next day the carpenters, that were making ready to
return to St. Mary's City, found themselves engaged for another three
months, for the purpose of rebuilding the house they had just completed.
Moreover, their new job involved no carpentry at all, but laying bricks. First
Monsieur sent a party to explore the beaches for clay; when they found a
good bed he set half his crew to digging, shaping, and firing, and the other
half to mixing mortar and laying the finished bricks. What he did, in effect,
was simply erect a new house of brick to encase the wooden one, leaving
all the doors and windows in their original locations. It wanted four months
instead of three to complete the job, during which period Indians were re-
marked more frequently than before, in ones and twos* The finished manor
even Maman remembers as a truly formidable affair*

"When the last brick was in place, Monsieur Edouard assembled all his
workmen and servants before the house. Some weeks earlier, one of their
number— I'll have more to say of him anon: he was an English redemptioner
so jealous of his master's favor that he changed his name from James to
Jacques— this fellow had found a salvage bow and arrows in the woods
nearby, and now Cecile instructed him to secure a resinous pine knot to

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 719 ]

the shaft of an arrow, down by the head, and set it ablaze, after what
was held to be the manner of the Indians.

" 'Now fire/ he ordered Jacques. 'Shoot the arrow at my house, s'il vous
plait!

"All the party watched these goings-on with much interest, for everyone
knew why Monsieur had encased his house with brick. The redemptioner
took aim and, being a reasonably good marksman, contrived to hit the great
house some thirty feet distant The arrow glanced off the bricks and fell
harmlessly to the ground.

" 'VozW Cecile shouted in Alfred's ear. "Can they harm us now, my
brilliant captain?'

" 1 see no likelihood that they will,, Monsieur; so long as the salvages
have a care to aim only at the walls, we are as secure as the Bastille/

" 'What do you mean? What new folly is this you've hatched?'

" 'Should they shoot from the woods, Monsieur/ Alfred ventured, 'as they
assuredly would do, why then they must needs aim high, the more so since
these fire-arrows are so heavy. Reason dictates that a high trajectory would
be most likely to bring the arrows down upon the roof, and the roof is
still made of wood/

"For some moments Cecile could not find his voice, and the fawning
fellow with the bow, who was unspeakably envious of Alfred's position in
the household, offered to put his theory to the test; but Cecile snatched
away the bow in time and dismissed the company, calling them idlers and
ne'er-do-wells. On the following day the men found themselves dispatched
in search of slate, for the purpose of recovering the roof. , . .

"Now it happens that there is not a single piece of roofing slate in the
whole of Dorset, to my knowledge; the men combed the countryside and
the riverbanks for days and discovered naught but a few hunting Indians
here and there. These they joyfully reported to their employer, who grew so
frightened (I'm sure he had heard the usual tales of massacres ere he left St.
Mary's) that he scarcely durst venture beyond his palissade, and cursed
Alfred with every breath. Someone suggested that he have his slate quarried
and shipped from across the Bay, but Cecile trembled at the prospect of
leaving himself vulnerable for so long. Finally he ordered the workmen to
cover the peaked roof with large, flat bricks, and this they proceeded to do.
Under the enormous additional weight the rafters commenced to buckle; it
became necessary to fashion heavy vertical piers from whole logs to support
them. The job required another month and immeasurable bother, inasmuch
as portions of the floors and partitions had to be removed to accommodate

[ J2O ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the piers. Upon its completion the house looked very secure indeed, if some-
what grotesque: it was during this period that the laborers dubbed it The
Castle, in jest, and Monsieur Edouard, for once more flattered than an-
noyed, renamed his property Castlehaven. Again the company was assem-
bled before the main entrance, and obliging Jacques lobbed a new fire-
arrow onto the roof. It struck the tiles, rolled down the slope, and came to
rest upon a sort of cornice, where it eventually burned out

" Well, sir?7 Cecile demanded, and none replied. Alfred looked away.

" 'I command you to say truthfully, on pain of flogging: is my castle
invulnerable? My Jacques shall fire where'er you wish!'

" 'I have no love for floggings, Monsieur/

" 'Then you must command him/

"Jacques, I imagine, was so pleased that he could scarcely manage to light
a new fire-arrow and draw the bow. Into a window/ Alfred murmured,
'any window . . / And he indicated with his arm the rows of open window
frames on both floors of the house.

" 'Son of a harlot!' Cecile cried, and this time when he snatched the bow
he took a swingeing cut at Alfred, who must surely have had his skull
cracked had he not sprung back. The company dispersed, and Alfred was
birched that night for the first time since, on his advice, the m&nage Edouard
had abandoned Paris. During the next week all the first-floor windows were
bricked in, and those on the second floor were reduced to shuttered em-
brasures like cannon-ports. It goes without saying that the absence of light
and air made living downstairs intolerable, but so secure was Cecile in his
fortress that he was actually smiling when he assembled everyone for the
third time to witness his triumph over his servant

" 'Have I left aught undone?'

" 'Naught, Monsieur, that I can imagine/

" 'Ha, did you hear, mes amis? Monsieur Alfred hath assured me I am
safe. I think he will detain you no longer. Make ready to depart/

" 'Ah, Monsieur, I shouldn't dismiss them/

"Cecile squeezed the valet's arm. 'Oh, you shouldn't, shouldn't you? And
may your poor benighted master hear the reason?'

"'When the workmen are gone, Monsieur, you will have only your
servants and yourself to defend the house: four men to a door* But the
salvage, if he hath a fancy to attack us, will attack from every side '

" 'Flog this man!' Cecile cried, and the luckless fellow was dragged off
by Jacques and the others. Then the overseer of the workmen approached
very cautiously and enquired whether his men were free to go. Idiot!' Cecile

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 721 ]

thundered. 'Close up the doorways, all save one, and fix two stout crossbars
to that!'

"In a day the final alterations were completed, and without risking an-
other consultation with Alfred, Cecile sent the workmen back to St.
Mary's City, where they doubtless still relate the tale of their curious labors.
As soon as they were gone Monsieur entered his castle, inspected the three
bricked-up doorways to make certain no cracks were left unsealed, swung
the two great crossbars to and fro upon their pivots to assure himself of their
adequacy, and ascended the dark stairs to his sitting-room—all the habitable
rooms were perforce upstairs; only Cecile slept below, away from the window
slits. He summoned Alfred to him,

" 'Is it not a pleasant thing to be altogether secure from the onslaughts
of the salvage? Is it not gratifying to know that one's home is in sooth a
castle, proof against the most furious of assaults?'

"Alfred held his peace,

" 'Damn you, sir; speak upl Do we not rest here in a fortress in no way
vulnerable?'

"Alfred went over to one of the apertures and surveyed the scene below.

"'Answer me! If there is a gap in my defenses (which of course there is
not), I command you to tell me, or by our Lord I'll have yOu flayed alive!'

"Alfred was afraid to turn from the window, but he said, 'There is one,
Monsieur.*

"Cecile sprang from his chair. "Then tell me!'

44 'I should rather not, Monsieur, for the reason that it is irremediable.
Absolutely naught is to be done about it/

44 'You have gone mad!' Monsieur Edouard whispered. 'Nay, I see it! You
say these things to torment me; to make me spend myself into poverty! I see
the plot, sir!* He demanded again to be told, but Alfred durst not speak.
At that moment there was a sound at the front door: someone entered,
and in the room the two men heard the crossbars swing into place and
soft footsteps ascend the stair. Monsieur Edouard came near to swooning.

44 'What shall we do? The salvages are in the house! How shall we escape?'

"Alfred's expression was apologetic. 'Where many exits are,' he said, 'are
many entrances, Monsieur; where but one entrance is, there is no exit.'

"Then the voice of Madame Edouard came meekly from the stair.
'Cecile? Would you please have Alfred attend those crossbars? I find them
difficult to close/

"Her husband made no reply, and Sophie, who was used to such rebuffs,
presently returned downstairs* Alfred, meanwhile, had gone once more to

[ 722 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the embrasure, and now Monsieur Edouard, his heart still pounding, crept
up behind and caught him under the shoulders. The servant was old and
frail; the master middle-aged and robust: albeit the opening was none too
large, Cecile soon had his valet squeezed quite through it, and Alfred's head
was entirely smashed upon the new brick terrace below!

" 'He fell/ Cecile announced to the household shortly after, and no one
questioned the master's diagnosis. That night Monsieur had his bedding
shifted from the first floor up into the attic, under the rafters, where despite
the poor ventilation he retired content beside the great hewn piers. Below,
where the household slumbered, the single door was fastened with its
double crossbars. Jacques, the new valet, assured his master that he was in
every way invulnerable— ancj Cecile slept soundly/'

Henrietta delivered the final sentence with her eyes closed and her voice
sardonically hushed. There was a pause, and then Anna cried, "Is that the
end, Henrietta?"

The girl pretended surprise. "Why of course it is! That is, the tale ends
there— what could Homer add to't? As for the history, 'tis curious enough,
but it hath the nature of an anticlimax. The Castle burned to the ground
not long after, from the inside out, and my grandfather and grandmother
burned with it. Maman was saved by Jacques, that some folk guessed had
set the fire; he raised her in his own house till she married Papa, and pre-
tended to be her uncle till the day he died. Don't you think a castle should
last longer than that?"

The three listeners praised both the story itself and Henrietta's rendering
of it; Ebenezer, in particular, was touched by her combination of spirit,
beauty, and wit, and was surprised to discover among his feelings a certain
envy for McEvoy.

" 'Twas a marvelous tale, well told," he said* "and as nicely pointed as
one of Aesop's. Throw wide the doors and let the pirates in!" Henrietta
reminded him of his promise to surpass it, and the poet's tone grew warm
and serious. " Tis a chore that gives me pleasure^ for it brings you closer
to Anna and me than ever friendship could."

"Marry, then out with't!" Anna too regarded him wonderingly.

" 'Tis as rare and happy a turn as e'er the dice of Chance have thrown/'
Ebenezer said. "Your mother, Henrietta, is that same Roxanne our father
once saved from drowning in the Choptankl She— she was our wet nurse
after Mother .died a-bearing me and her own child died a-bearing, and till
the fourth year of our life, when Father fetched us back to England, she

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 723 ]

was as much to us as any mother could be!" He finished his revelation
with tears in his eyes.

"Dear Heav'n!" Mary whispered. "Is that true?" Anna and Henrietta
clasped hands and regarded each other with astonishment.

Ebenezer nodded. "Aye, 'tis true, and haply it sheds some light upon
Mrs. Russecks's shifting attitudes toward us. Father told me the story just
before I left: Roxanne's uncle— that is to say, this rascal Jacques— must have
been a man of Sir Harry's temper, inasmuch as he guarded her in the way
Henrietta hath been guarded, and when Nature slipped through his de-
fenses, as is her wont, he turned Roxanne out to starve." He related quickly
what Andrew had told him of the rescue and Roxanne's unusual indenture-
terms. "There were some lying rumors after Mother died that Roxanne
had become his mistress," he concluded. "In part, 'twas to give these
slanders the lie he left Cooke's Point for London. I recall his saying that
Roxanne's 'uncle* had approached him with apologies and begged for her
to come back to him; he was supposed to have arranged a good match
for her."

Henrietta winced. "With Papa!" Mary shook her head and sighed.

"Aye," the poet affirmed. "This Jacques, evidently, was indebted to Harry
Russecks and hoped thus to settle his obligations. To be sure, Roxanne
had no need to consent; but she told me not long since that she had
come to loathe all men and wed Sir Harry in effect to mortify her sex and
gratify this loathing. She was much attached to Anna and me, whom
she'd raised as her own children, and I daresay she felt abandoned, in a
sense, . , ."

"In every sense/' Mrs. Russecks's voice came from the hallway stairs and
was followed by the lady herself, who had clearly overheard the conversa-
tion. Ebenezer rose quickly from his chair and apologized for speaking
indiscreetly*

"Thou'rt guilty of nothing," Mrs. Russecks said, looking past him to
her daughter. " 'Tis you that have been naughty, Henrietta, to tell tales out

of school " She got no farther, for Henrietta ran weeping to embrace

her mother and beg forgiveness; yet it was clear that the girl's emotion was
not contrition for any misdemeanor, but sympathy and love inspired by
what she had learned, Mrs. Russecks kissed her forehead and turned her
eyes for the first time, eager and yet pained, to the twins; she managed to
control her feelings until Anna too was moved to embrace her, whereupon
she cried "Sweet babes!" and surrendered freely to her tears.

There ensued such a general chorus of weeping, in which Ebenezer and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Mary Mungummory participated as well, that for some minutes no other
sound was heard in the millhouse. Everyone embraced everyone else, not in
communal lamentation but in mutual catharsis; in the spirit summed up by
Ebenezer, the first to speak when the crest of the flood had passed and
everyone was sniffling privately.

"Sunt lacrimae rerum" he declared, wiping his eyes. 'Things must be
wept for."

But the day's surprises were not done. As soon as Mrs. Russecks had
satisfied, for the moment, her hunger to embrace the twins and beg pardon
for her previous aloofness— refraining, as did Ebenezer, from any allusion to
her now quite embarrassing attempt to seduce him, as well as to her own
seduction by Anna's supposed lover Burlingame, either of which in itself
could account for her distress— she joined them at the tea table, confessed
that she had overheard everything, and said to Ebenezer, "You made good
your vow to surpass Henrietta's story with a postscript, Eben (FGod, how
can my babies have grown so! And what trials have they not suffered!);
but I believe I may yet snatch back the prize with a postscript of my own,
To begin with, that 'vicious lying gossip' about your father and myself—
'twas gossip in sooth, and vicious, but it was no lie. For three years after
poor Anne's death— that was their mother, Henrietta— Andrew and I
mourned her together, for methinks I was no less devoted to her than was
he. But in the fourth year— i'faith, I loved him then, and hinted vainly at
betrothal!— in the fourth year I was in sooth his mistress. Prithee forgive
me fort!"

Both twins embraced her again and declared there was nothing to for-
give. "On the contrary," Ebenezer said grimly, "'tis my father needs for-*
giving. I see now what you meant by saying you were abandoned in every
sense."

"Nay," Mrs. Russecks said, "there is more . , ." She raised her eyes
painfully to Mary, whose face suddenly changed from deep-frowned reflec-
tion to understanding.

"Ah, God, Roxie!"

Mrs. Russecks nodded. "You have guessed it, my dear/' She sniffed, took
both of Henrietta's hands in hers across the table, and looked unfalteringly
at her daughter as she spoke. "Twice in my life I've loved a man.
The first was Benjy Long, a pretty farmer-boy that lived near Uncle
Jacques: he it was I gave my maidenhead to, when I was sixteen, and anon
conceived his child; he it was ran off to sea when I would not cross my
guardian's wishes, nor have I heard of him from that day to this; and he it

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 725 ]

is, methinks, that still hath letters-patent to my heart— though I daresay he's
either long since fat and married or long since dead!" She laughed briefly
and then grew sad again. "Shall I prove to you that time is no cure for
folly? To this hour I cannot give o'er expecting him to come for me; often
and often, when Andrew left me and when Harry would abuse me, I'd pray
to little Benjy as to God, and to this hour my poor heart falters when a

stranger comes to call " She smiled at Ebenezer. "Especially if he calls

himself Sir Benjaminl"

"Ah, Christ, forgive me!" Ebenezer pleaded. Mrs. Russecks indicated with
a gesture that there was nothing to pardon and returned her attention to
Henrietta. "That was my first love; Andrew was the other, and by far the
greater, but merely to think of him drives me near to madness . . ." She
paused to recompose herself, "Let me put it thus, my dears: this second love
affair was in essence like the first, save for two important differences. One,
as you know already, is that my lover abandoned me . . ." She squeezed her
daughter's hands. "The other difference is that this time the baby lived."

18: THE POET WONDERS WHETHER THE COURSE OF
HUMAN HISTORY IS A PROGRESS, A DRAMA, A
RETROGRESSION, A CYCLE, AN UNDULATION, A
VORTEX, A RIGHT- OR LEFT-HANDED SPIRAL, A MERE
CONTINUUM, OR WHAT HAVE YOU. CERTAIN
EVIDENCE IS BROUGHT FORWARD, BUT OF AN
AMBIGUOUS AND INCONCLUSIVE NATURE

THE IMPORT OF MRS. RUSSECKS'S LAST REMARK— THAT IS, THAT HENRI-

etta was her child by Andrew Cooke and thus half-sister to the twins-
occasioned a new round of joyful and sympathetic embraces. Mrs. Russecks
apologized to Ebenezer and Anna for having transferred her resentment
to them, and they apologized in turn for their father's ungentlemanly be-
havior of two dozen years earlier; Henrietta begged her mother's retroactive
forgiveness for all the times she (Henrietta) had inveighed against her for
marrying Russecks, and Roxanne begged reciprocal forgiveness for having
conceived her out of wedlock as well as for the double injury of subjecting
her to Sir Harry's maltreatment and obliging her to believe she was his
daughter* Even Mary was included, for the well-kept secret had caused oc-

[ 726 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

casional misunderstandings on both sides during her long friendship with
the miller's wife. There being no wine on the premises, when all were
shriven and embraced, a new pot of tea was boiled for celebratory use, and,
alternately shy and demonstrative, the new relatives talked long into the
evening. For all her avowed hatred of Andrew Cooke, Roxanne was ex-
ceedingly curious about his life in England and his present highly ques-
tionable position; she deplored the injustices of which Ebenezer had been
the victim and wept every time she thought of what Anna had suffered
on Sir Harry's account. That night, moreover, Anna and Henrietta, who
slept together, must each have taken the other completely into her con-
fidence, for Ebenezer was surprised to observe next morning that they spoke
freely of Henry Burlingame. At breakfast the three young people were in
almost hilarious spirits: Ebenezer traded Hudibrastics with Henrietta, whom
he found to have a real gift for satire, and Anna declared herself totally
unconcerned about the future— as far as she was concerned, Roxanne was
her mother too, and she would be content if she never saw Maiden or her
father again. Roxanne and Mary looked on joyfully, wiping their eyes on
an apron-hem from time to time.

By midmorning it had been decided that the Russeckses would travel
with the Cookes to Anne Arundel Town as soon as McEvoy returned from
Bloodsworth Island; there Roxanne and Henrietta would remain until the
miller's estate was sold, whereupon they (and, Henrietta hinted demurely,
perhaps McEvoy) would sail for England and a new life. Ebenezer would
carry his urgent message to Governor Nicholson and, if the situation war-
ranted, plead for gubernatorial restitution of his estate on the grounds that
it was being used for activities subversive to the welfare of the Province;
if his appeal bore no fruit or his father proved unrelenting, he and Anna
would leave Maryland also as members of Roxanne's family, and he would
endeavor to find employment in London. Henry Burlingame and Joan
Toast, though they weighed heavily on the twins' minds, were provisionally
excluded from their plans, since the whereabouts of the fonner and the
attitude of the latter were uncertain.

Their spirits were lifted even higher by the appearance, shortly after
noontime, of McEvoy and Bertrand, who announced that Captain Cairn
was waiting with his sloop in the creek to ferry them anywhere in the world.
McEvoy kissed Henrietta ardently, and her mother as well, and Bertrand
embraced his master with speechless gratitude.

"Would ye fancy it?" McEvoy laughed, "Those wretches thought we'd
left 'em stranded! When they saw me ride in with old Bill-o'-the-Goose

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 727 ]

they reckoned I'd been captured again, and commenced to give ye what-
for!" His face darkened for a moment, and while Bertrand (who, aside from
an unwonted scrub of beard and general dishevelment, looked little the
worse for his ordeal) professed his delight at seeing Miss Anna safe and
sound, he confided to Ebenezer, " Twas all Dick Parker and the others
could manage to get us out alive; our friend Billy Rumbly hath gone
salvage altogether, and would have had us murthered on the spot!"

Ebenezer sighed. "I feared as much. I suppose he'll inflame the Ahatch-
whoops even farther/'

"Aye." McEvoy displayed a new fishbone ring of the sort that had saved
Ebenezer. "Chicamec gave me this for retrieving his son, and Dick Parker
gave another to Bertrand, but I'd not give a farthing for its protection
when the war comes— and 'twill come sooner now than before, with Master
Cohunkowprets at the helm. I mean to sail out o' this miserable province
the minute I have my freight, and Henrietta's going with me if I have to
kidnap her." He blushed, for his last remark had chanced to fall into a pause
in the general conversation and was heard by all.

"I hope you shan't need such drastic measures." Ebenezer laughed. "Nor
is't likely I'd permit you to treat my sister so unchivalrously!" He proceeded
to dumfound his companion with the news of his relationship to Henrietta
and the party's plans for the immediate future.

"I vow and declare, Eben, ye frighten me!" He looked at Henrietta with
awe, "Nay, methinks I should steal her away all the sooner, ere ye discover
me for your brother as well!"

As soon as all the salutation had been got over, Mrs. Russecks suggested
that Bertrand be dispatched to summon the Captain for dinner as well as
for protection from the pirates, against whose rumored presence the village
had taken such a posture of defense. The valet was much alarmed by this
last disclosure, but McEvoy scoffed at the idea.

"If there were any pirates about, they'd have taken us ere now; we were
the only ship in sight from Limbo Straits to Church Creek! In any case, the
Captain's not likely to be aboard; he wanted to recruit himself a crew that
knows more about crewing than Bertrand and myself."

Everyone except Bertrand and Mrs, Russecks joined McEvoy in minimiz-
ing the threat of piracy, and upon Mary's offering, at dinner, to oversee the
closing of the millhouse and the sale of the inn (which latter property she
herself expressed some interest in), the party resolved to set sail for Anne
Arundel Town that same afternoon if possible.

'The sooner I leave Church Creek behind, the better," Henrietta said,

[728] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and McEvoy, perhaps something less than altruistically, observed that Billy
Rumbly's defection made it even more urgent to apprise Nicholson of the
situation at once.

"Nonetheless," Roxanne declared,. "I can't help trembling at the thought
of pirates. All of us here, save Maiy, have been captured once before and
cruelly used and escaped by the skin of our teeth: 'tis not likely well be so
lucky a second time."

"Aye/' the poet agreed. "But by the same token 'tis less than likely such a
catastrophe could befall the same party twice in's life." He went on, partly
in good-natured irony and partly to divert the woman from her fears, to
speak of sundry theories of history— the retrogressive, held by Dante and
Hesiod; the dramatic, held by the Hebrews and the Christian fathers; the
progressive, held by Virgil; the cyclical, held by Plato and Ecclesiasticus;
the undulatory, and even the vortical hypothesis entertained, according to
Henry Burlingame, by a gloomy neo-Platonist of Christ's College, who be-
lieved that the cyclic periods of history were growing ever shorter and thus
that at some not-unpredictable moment in the future the universe would
go rigid and explode, just as the legendary bird called Ouida (so said
Burlingame) was reputed to fly in ever-diminishing circles until at the end
he disappeared into his own fundament. "The true and proper cyclist," he
averred, "ought not to fear being taken sgaifc by pirates, inasmuch as his
theory will loose him from their clutches as before; if you fear we'll be
recaptured and done to death, 'tis plain you believe the course of things to
be a sort of downward spiral— whether right- or left-handed I can't deter-
mine without farther enquiry."

By dint of these and like sophistical cajolements Mrs. Russecks was, if
not encouraged, at least quieted; after dinner the women's trunks and chests
were loaded onto Mary's wagon and drawn by Aphrodite through the deso-
late little village to a landing down on the creek, where Captain Cairn's
sloop was moored.

"Hallo, where is the Captain?" Ebenezer asked.

"He said we were to wait aboard for him if he had trouble finding a
crew," McEvoy said. "Methinks he'll have trouble finding anyone in yonder
village!"

When they had transferred their gear from the wagon to the deck, Mary
Mungummory declared with a wink at Ebenezer that, her errand in Church
Creek having failed in its object, she too must needs address herself to the
task of finding a crew. If she was successful, she said, her itgular circuit of
the county would bring her to Cooke's Point a few days hence, where she

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ J2Q ]

promised to plead the poet's case to Joan Toast, inquire as to the where-
abouts of Henry Burlingame, and relay any news to Anne Arundel Town.
She wished them all success in their embassy to the Governor, for her own
sake as well as theirs, and after an exchange of the most affectionate fare-
wells—especially with Roxanne, Henrietta, and Ebenezer— she returned up
the path towards the settlement.

Ebenezer surveyed the familiar deck. "Thank Heav'n the weather's fine:
my last voyage on this ship was a harrowing one!" He noticed that Bertrand,
who had been unusually subdued throughout the day, now looked quite
downcast, and asked him teasingly whether he had seen the Moor Boabdil
in the myrtle bushes,

44 'Sheart, sir," the valet complained, "I had almost as lief be back with
old Tom Pound as travel about in Maryland."

"Why, how is that?"

Bertrand replied that though he was eternally obliged to his master for,
among other things, effecting his release from Bloodsworth Island, it was
really a matter of frying-pan into fire, for old Colonel Robotham would
surely do him to death upon discovering that Miss Lucy was wed not to
the Poet Laureate at all, but to a servingman whose plebeian astrolabe had
already taken the azimuth and alnicanter of her singular constellation.

"You've done the lass a great injustice/' Ebenezer admitted, "but I'm
scarcely the man to reprove you for't, and the Colonel is far from blameless
in the matter himself* Methinks a marriage under such false pretense can
be annulled e'en after consummation, and I've no great fear of Lucy's claim
to Maiden; but I pity the poor tart for being twice deceived with a babe
in her belly, Tis your affair, of course; yet I could wish God* s body!"

From the stern of the sloop, where McEvoy had taken the ladies to wait
for the Captain's return, came a tumult of shrieks, squeals, and curses.
Ebenezer hastened aft to investigate and found himself confronted by a
man whose appearance from the tiny cabin set his knees a-tremble and
prostrated Bertrand upon the deck: a stout little man dressed in black from
beard to boots, with a pistol in one hand and an ebony stick in the other.

"Well, marry come up!" the fellow marveled. "Will ye look who's here,
Captain Scurry?"

His counterpart emerged onto the stern sheets, also brandishing a pistol
and supporting himself on a stick, "Fcod, Captain Stye, we've a bloody crew
to go with our pilot!" He drew closer and smiled evilly at Ebenezer. "I say,
Captain Stye, 'tis the very wretch that fouled his drawers in the King o' the
Seas!"

[ yjo ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"The same," said Captain Slye, "And that craven puppy yonder is our
friend the false laureate, that bilked us for a carriage-ride to Plymouth!"

The two rejoiced in the most unpleasant manner imaginable at having
accidentally caught up with three old acquaintances— they had already rec-
ognized McEvoy as the redemptioner who had so plagued them on their
last crossing. Captain Cairn, his countenance stricken, appeared on deck
at their order, and the party was assembled in the waist of the vessel

"God forgive me!" the Captain cried to Ebenezer. "I went to sign me a
crew, and these rogues set upon mel"

"Now, now," Captain Scurry admonished, "there's no way to speak o'
thy shipmates, sir! Our friend Captain Avery lies yonder in the lee o' James
Island and wants a pilot up the Bay, and inasmuch as Captain Slye and
myself was steering southwards, we promised to find him one. Tis no more
than any captain should do for another."

"What do you mean to do with us?" Ebenezer asked.

"What do?" echoed Captain Slye. "Ah well, sir, as thou'rt the Laureate
o' Maryland— ah, ye thought your friend John Coode would not betray ye,
eh? What would ye say if I told ye he weren't John Coode at all, but merely
one o' Coode's lieutenants? D'ye think Fd not know my own wife's father?
Mark the man's trembling! Methinks he'll smirch his drawers anon! What
shall we do with the merry lot, Captain Scuny?"

His partner chuckled. "Now, we might eat 'em alive for supper, Captain
Slye, or we might just put a ball in' each jack's belly . . "

"Set the women ashore," the poet said. "You've no quarrel with thenu"

Captain Scurry admitted that he had neither quarrel with nor appetite for
any female on the planet, but that he would not impose his personal tastes
upon Captain Avery and his crew, who having made a lengthy ocean cross-
ing would not be likely to refuse the blandishments of three so toothsome
ladies. He proposed to Captain Slye that the entire party, excluding Captain
Cairn, be cargoed into the hold and their final disposition left to the pirates.

Having had no prior experience of privateers, Anna Cooke seemed merely
dazed by what was taking place, but Roxanne and Henrietta clung to each
other and redoubled their lamentations. To all entreaties the kidnapers
replied with a sneer, and the hapless prisoners were obliged to descend into
the cramped and lightless hold of the sloop, which stank of oysters, McEvoy
embraced Henrietta in an effort to comfort her, and Ebenezer did likewise
to Anna; Bertrand and Mrs. Russecks had to deal with their terrors unas-
sisted, and it is surely to the latter's credit that she never once mentioned
the downward-spiral theory of history, which was much on the anguished

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 731 ]

poet's conscience. Over their heads they heard Slye and Scurry agree to
move the sloop from Church Creek out into Fishing Creek lest any vil-
lagers hear the prisoners* complaints, but to wait until nightfall before run-
ning down the Little Choptank to their rendezvous with Captain Avery.

A long while they languished silent in despair as black and exitless as
their prison. Then when the sloop got under way Anna began to whimper,
and her brother was moved to say, "What a wretched thing is happiness!

How I contemn it! An interlude such as ours of the past few days

'Sheart, 'tis a shaded waterhole on the desert track of life! The traveler
mistrusts his fortune; shocked by the misery he hath passed, sickened by
the misery yet to come, he rests but fitfully; the dates lie like pebbles in his
stomach; the water turns foul upon his tongue. Thus him whose dogged
fancy gives purpose to the journey; but on this path, who is no pilgrim
is perforce a vagrant, and woe to us less blest! For us 'tis causeless martyrdom,
ananabasis, and when Chance vouchsafes some niggard respite shq earns our
anger, not our gratitude. Show me the happy man who is neither foolish nor
asleepl"

If his companions understood this apostrophe, they did not respond to it.
Anna proposed that the three women destroy themselves at the earliest
opportunity rather than suffer mass ravishment by the pirates. " Tis not that
I choose death to dishonor/' she explained. "My virginity means naught to
me, but inasmuch as they'll surely murther us after, I'd as lief die now and
have done with't. If Eben will not throttle me, I mean to drown myself the
moment they fetch us on deck/'

Everyone protested except Ebenezer, who could only strike his brow and
groan. McEvoy argued that since death was certain, life was the only value,
and ought to be clung to at any cost; Anna retorted that since death was
certain, life had, on the contrary, no value whatever, and an additional
hour of torture was surely not worth living for,

"La, girl," Mrs. Russecks scoffed from across the black enclosure, "put
such notions out o* thy pretty head! Suppose Henrietta and I had taken our
lives when Tom Pound captured us? We'd not be here today!"

There was general, if grim, laughter at the unintended irony of this re-
mark, but Mrs, Russecks insisted that anything— even ten years as a sea-going
concubine— VMS endurable so long as one could hope for ultimate improve-
ment, "We've no assurance they mean to murther us/' she said. "Ffaith,
we're not even raped yet!"

Sensing that Anna's resolve was beginning to falter, Ebenezer pursued
this point "Do you recall when we read Euripides with Henry, how we

[ 732 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

contemned The Trojan Women out of hand? Hecuba we called a self-
pitying frump, and Andromache either a coward or a hypocrite. If she loves
her Hector so, how is't she lets this wretched Pyrrhus make her his whore?
Why not take her own life and save the family honor?' What unrelenting
moralists children are! What inflexible judges! But I tell you, Anna, I con-
temn the woman no more. We praise the martyr; he is our shame and our
exemplar; but who among us fallen will embrace him? What's more, there is
a high moral in Andtomache; her tears indict the bloody circus of man's lust;
her sigh drowns out the shouts of a thousand heroes; her resignation turns
Hellas into Vanity Fair."

Ebenezer himself was not so persuaded by this argument as he hoped
Anna would be. Committing suicide merely to escape pain he could not but
regard as cowardly, though he understood and readily sympathized with
such cowardice; suicide as a point of honor, on the other hand, like martyr-
dom, made him uneasy. The martyr, it seemed to him, was in a sense un-
natural, since blind Nature has neither codes nor causes; it was from this
point of view that Andromache, like Ecclesiasticus, appeared the more
sophisticated moralist, and heroes of every stamp seemed drunkards or mad-
men. Yet the very un-Naturalness, the vanity, the hubris, as it were, of hero-
ism in general and martyrdom in particular were their most appealing
qualities; granted that the Earth, as Burlingame was fond of pointing out,
is "a dust-mote whirling through the night," there was something brave,
defiantly human, about the passengers on this dust-mote who perished for
some dream of Value. If from Andromache's point of view they seemed
insane, from their own they were godlike; her "Nature" was precisely their
enemy, and her fatalism a surrender to oblivion. In a word, their behavior
was quixotic: to die, to risk death, even to raise a finger for any Cause was
to pennon one's lance with the riband of Purpose, so the poet judged,
and had about it the same high lunacy of a tilt with Manchegan windmills.

But if his words were not altogether heartfelt, his purpose was, and
sensing that his arguments had had some effect on Anna, he returned to
them several hours later when the sloop was under way again— presumably
to James Island. "I beg you to think of one thing only: Reason aside, is
there aught on earth you prize? Suppose us safe in Anne Arundel Town:
what would you wish for then?"

"Some years of peace," Anna replied unhesitatingly. "I've no use any
longer for estates or e'en for a husband, since— since Henry is denied me.
What can they matter, after all that hath occurred? In time, perhaps> new

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 733 ]

goals may beckon, but just now I should wish to live some years in utter
peace."

Ebenezer stirred. "How my heart responds to that ambition! But stay,
there is my point: if aught in life hath value to us, we must not give o'er its
pursuit."

He felt Anna tremble. "Tis not worth the costl"

"Nor is aught else"

She wet his hand with tears. "If I must suffer what I shall, then I amend
my wish: I wish we two were the only folk on earth!"

"Eve and Adam?" The poet's face burned, "So be it; but we must be
God as well, and build a universe to hold our Garden."

Anna squeezed his hand.

"What I mean," he said, "we must cling to life and search each moment
for escape . . ,"

Anna shook her head, "Anon they'll run you through and throw you to
the fishes, and I . * „ Nay, Eben! This present hour is all our future, and
this black cave our only Garden, Anon the/11 tear our innocence from
us ..."

He sensed her eyes upon him. "Dear God! I am rent to pieces!"

Just then a shout came down from above, answered by another off in
the distance: the rendezvous had been made. All three women wailed at
once.

"Make hostel" cried Anna.

The poet groaned* "You must forgive me "

Anna shrieked and fled on hands and knees across the hold; a few minutes
later, when the hatch-cover was lifted and a lantern held down the ladder-
way, Ebenezer saw her shuddering in the arms of Mrs. Russecks.

"Ah, now," said the lantern-bearer, "I do despise to be a spoilsport, but
Captain Avery wishes to speak to the six of ye on deck. He hath offered
to torture the ladies at once if ye do not come promptly and civilly, sirs."

After a moment's hesitation the prisoners complied, urged on by Hen-
rietta and Mrs. Russecks. Night had fallen, and a strong, cold breeze had
blown up out of the west; for all the turmoil in his head, Ebenezer was
surprised to observe that the sloop had not anchored but only come up "in
irons" some distance from the pirate ship, whose lights could be seen several
hundred yards ahead. Slye and Scurry had picked up a small party, and the
prisoners were instructed to stand fast amidships while the vessel was got
under way again. The poet's heart lifted: could it be that they were not to
be transf erred to the other ship?

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Captain Cairn, who happened to pass nearby, confirmed his hope. 'Tin to
pilot their Captain up the Bay/' he murmured, "lest his ship be spied and
taken." He could say no more, for the pirates sent him aft to tend the main-
sheet. Captain Slye and Captain Scurry bid the prisoners a sneering fare-
well and departed in a dinghy to their own ship, which presumably lay
with Avery's Phansie in the lee of the island. Darkness prevented Ebenezer
from seeing his new captor, who from the helm of the sloop ordered one of
his two lieutenants to mind the jib sheet and the other—a gaunt, blond-
bearded youth who looked more like a rustic than a pirate— to guard the
prisoners. When Ebenezer moved to put his arm about Anna's shoulders
she recoiled as if he were a pirate himself.

"Stand off, there, matey/' the guard threatened. "Leave that little chore
to us/'

The women huddled together in the lee of the mast; the two younger
ones still sniffed and whimpered, but Mrs. Russecks, seeing that their ordeal
was not yet upon them, regained composure enough to embrace and comfort
them both. Whatever the pirate captain had on his mind, it was clearly not
so pressing as Captain Scurry (who had summoned the prisoners from the
hold) had led them to believe; for more than an hour the three men stood
mute and shivering before their guard's pistols while the sloop bowled north-
wards on a broad reach up the Chesapeake. The wind was fresh, the Bay
quite rough; the moonlight was occulted by an easting scud. At last a voice
from the helm said, "Very well, Mr. Shannon, fetch the gentlemen aft."

Fearful of what lay ahead, Ebenezer yearned to kiss Anna one last time;
he hesitated, and in the end decided not to risk the guard's displeasure, but
all the way aft he railed inwardly against his own general timidity. The
small light of the binnacle showed Captain Cairn standing tensely at the
helm and revealed the countenance of the notorious Long Ben Avery: a
sad-eyed, beagle-faced fellow, not at all fearsome to behold, who wore a
modest brown beard and curled mustachios.

"Good evening, gentlemen/' he said, scarcely raising his eyes from the
compass. "I shan't detain ye long. Would ye say she lies abeam, Captain
Cairn?"

"Off the starboard bow," the Captain grumbled. "If we don't run aground
ye'll soon hear the surf to leeward."

"Excellent." The pirate captain frowned and sucked at his pipe. "Aye,
there's the surf; thou'rt a rare good pilot, Captain Cairn! Now, gentlemen,

I've but one question to put Ah, damn this tobacco!" He drew at the

pipestem until the coals glowed yellow. "There we are. Tis a simple ques-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 73$ ]

tion, sirs, that ye may answer one at a time, commencing with the tall
fellow: are ye, or have ye ever been, an able seaman?"

The pirate called Mr. Shannon prodded Ebenezer with his pistol, but the
poet wanted no urging to reply; his heart glowed like the pipe coals with
hope at their captor's gentlemanly air. "Nay, sir, I'm but a poor poet, with
no craft save that of rhyming and no treasure save my dear sister yonder,
for whose honor I'd trade my life! Dare I ask your pledge as one gentleman
to another, sir, that no harm will be offered those ladies?"

"Ask the second gentleman, Mr. Shannon/'

The guard poked Bertrand.

"Nay, master, rfore God I am no seaman, nor aught else in the world
but a simple servingman that curses the hour of his birth!"

"Very good." Captain Avery sighed, still watching the binnacle. "And
you, sir?"

"This is but the third time I've been on shipboard, sir," McEvoy declared
at once. "The first was as a redemptioner, kidnaped out o' London by Slye
and Scurry; the second was as a passenger on this very ship this morning. I
swear to ye, I know not my forepeak from my aft!"

"Cleverly put," Captain Avery approved. "Then it seems I cannot enlist
ye for my crew. Mr. Shannon, will ye escort these pleasant gentlemen o'er
the taffrail?"

Ebenezer stiffened as if struck, and Bertrand fell to his knees; even Cap-
tain Cairn seemed not to realize for a second what had been said. The
guard gestured towards the taffrail with one of his pistols and nudged the
trembling valet with his boot

"There's a little island to leeward/' observed Captain Avery. f With some
luck and the sea behind ye, ye might manage it. Count five, Mr. Shannon,
and shoot any gentleman who lingers."

"One," said Mr. Shannon. "Two,"

McEvoy gave a great oath and kicked off his boots. "Farewell, Eben," he
said. "Farewell, Henriettal" He sprang over the rail and splashed into the
sea astern.

"Three " Mr. Shannon smiled at the remaining two as they also removed
their boots. An inquiring female voice called back from the mast, but the
question was lost on the wind, Bertrand gave a final whimper and vaulted
overboard.

"Four."

Ebenezer hastened to the taffrail. Hoping against hope, he called to the
pirate captain's back, "Do I have your .pledge, sir? About the ladies?"

[736] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"I pledge to swive your pleasant ladies from sprit to transom/' said Long
Ben Avery. "I pledge to give every jack o7 my crew his slavering fill o' them,
and when they're done I pledge to carve your little sister into ship's-beef and
salt her down for the larboard watch. Fire away, Mr. Shannon."

Given another ten seconds Ebenezer might have run forward to die at
Anna's side, but under the impulse of the sudden command he sprang
wildly over the rail and smacked face-first into the icy water. The triple
shock of the threat, the fall, and the cold came near to robbing him of his
senses; he retched with anguish, coughed salt water from his throat, and
after some moments of frantic indirection, caught sight of the sloop's light
receding into the darkness. The waves slapped and tossed him; merely to
float, as he had done once before in similar straits, would be to perish of
the cold in short order. Taking his bearings from the sloop and the direction
of the seas, he thrashed out for the island allegedly to the east, though his
very heart recoiled from the freezing water.

"Halloo!" he called, and imagined that he heard an answer up the wind,
A thought as chilling as the Bay occurred to him: what if there was no
island after all? What if Long Ben Avery had fired their hopes as a cruel
jest? In any case, if there was an island, it would have to be close, or he was
a dead man; the following seas pushed him in the right direction but
diminished by half the effectiveness of his stroke, and the low temperature
robbed him of breath.

He was encouraged, a minute or two later, by a positive cry ahead: ''This
way! I'm standing on bottom!"

"McEvoy?" he called joyfully.

"Aye! Keep swimming! Don't give up! Where's Bertrand? BertrandF

From ahead and somewhat to the right of the poet came another re-
sponse; not long afterwards the three men were panting and shivering to-
gether on a dark pebbled beach.

"Praise God, 'tis a miracle!" Bertrand cried. "Twice drowned by pirates
and twice washed safe on an ocean isle! Methinks we could walk down the
strand a bit and find Drakepecker once again!"

But McEvoy and Ebenezer were too sickened by the plight of the women
to rejoice at their own good fortune. The poet deemed it best to say nothing
of Captain Avery's parting threat, since they were unable to prevent his
carrying it out; even so, McEvoy vowed to devote the rest of his life to
pursuing and assassinating the pirate.

By comparison with the air on their wet clothes, the Bay seemed tepid.
<nWe must get out of the wind and make a fire," McEvoy said*

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"We've no way to light one," Ebenezer pointed out listlessly. Now that
he was safe, his mind was full of Anna's fate and their last interview; he
began to wish that he had drowned.

"Then let's build a shelter, ere we freeze/' McEvoy said.

They hurried up onto the island proper, which appeared to be only a few
hundred feet across; there they found loblolly pines, a few scrubby myrtles,
and much underbrush, but not much likely-looking material for a shelter;
nor was the growth an adequate windbreak. The leeward slope of the island
was somewhat more comfortable, though even there it was unthinkable
that they could long survive soaking wet in a forty-mile winter wind.

"M-many, sirs, Hook yonder!" Bertrand cried, shaking with cold. " Tis
a light!"

Indeed, out over the water to the east of them shone what appeared to be
the lighted windows of a house. The distance was hard to estimate, but
unless the structure was very small, McEvoy judged, it lay three 6r four
miles away. In the face of Ebenezer's previous objection he declared that
they must build a fire at once, set fire to the entire island if need be, to
attract rescuers; else they'd be dead before sunrise.

"Let's scour the island/' he proposed. "If we hit on naught better, why,
we'll claw out a trench and bury ourselves together under evergreen boughs.
Methinks we must prance and swing our arms about."

They decided to search together, in order to utilize the sooner anything
they might come across. One man on the beach, one on the brush line,
and one at the edge of the heavier growth, they proceeded northwards up
the lee shore of the island* calling encouragement to one another. But their
search seemed vain: every stick of wood was wet, much even waterlogged,
and no one yet had proposed any means of ignition should it have proved
dry. Moreover, the growth thinned out as they approached the northern
end of the island, which appeared to be half a mile or so in length.

Not far from the point, Bertrand, who had been patroling the brush lines,
called for them to come at once and behold another miracle, " Tis enough
to drive a body to the church!" he declared proudly. "Lookee here, what I
came nigh to breaking my toes on!"

At his feet they saw a longish black shape, which on closer approach
they recognized as a stranded dinghy.

Tfaitht" cried McEvoy, scrabbling inside to examine it, "There's even
an oarl She must have blown hither in a storm!"

"I doubt she's seaworthy/' Ebenezer warned, observing that several inches
of water stood in the bilge. "But we might use her for a shelter/'

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Nay," McEvoy protested. "She must be tight, Eben, else the water would
have leaked out, would it not? I say let's make a try at yonder light! But
stay— we've only one oar."

"There's a trick called sculling . . ." Ebenezer offered doubtfully. "But
f Christ, John, listen to that chop— 'tis like the ocean! We'd drown in five
minutes!"

"But if we manage it, we're safe," McEvoy reminded him. "If we stay
here, belike we'll freeze to death ere sunrise, and e'en if we do not, who's
to say we'll be rescued in the morning?"

They pondered the alternatives briefly, and the third course of sending
one of their number to bring assistance to the others.

" Twill take one man to scull and another to bail," Bertrand ventured.
"We'd as lief die together, as apart, hadn't we, sirs?"

"Then I say let's drown together instead o' freezing," said McEvoy.
<(What say ye, Eben?"

The poet started, and saw by his companion's grim smile that McEvoy
had formed the question deliberately. For an instant he forgot the frightful
cold: he was at table in Locket's, where the eyes of Ben Oliver, Dick Mem-
weather, Tom Trent, and Joan Toast had joined McEvoy's to render him
immobile; again, as then, he felt the weight of choice devolve upon him,
peg him out like a tan yard hide in all directions. It was queer moment: he
felt as must a seasoned Alpinist brought back to a crag whence he fell of
old and barely survived; many another and more formidable he has scaled
since without a tremor, but this one turns his blood to water . * .

With some effort, Ebenezer threw off the memory. "I say we try for the
house, The wind and waves are behind us, and for better or worse we'll
have done with't in an hour."

However chilling this final observation, it spurred them to action. They
overturned the dinghy to empty the bilge, dragged it down to the water,
and launched it. McEvoy's reasoning proved correct: the water standing in
the bilge had kept the chine- and keelson-seams tight. At Ebenezer's sug-
gestion, who had learned something of rowing from Burlingame, Bertrand
and McEvoy each equipped himself with half of a shingle discovered on
the beach, both to assist in freeing out the water they were certain to ship
and to help prevent the little boat from broaching to in the following seas.

Though he truly cared little now for his own safety, the burden of
responsibility weighed heavy on the poet's heart. He knew so little about
what he was doing, and they carried out his suggestions, on which their
lives depended, as if he were Captain Cairnl But however meager his sea-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 739 ]

manship, it was apparently superior to Bertrand's and McEvoy's, who had
never rowed a boat in their lives. And however great the burden, it was no
longer an unfamiliar one: he grappled with it calmly, as with an old, well-
known opponent, and wondered whether his sensibility had perhaps of late
been toughened like the hands of an apprentice mason, by frequent
laceration.

"Methinks 'twere best the twain of you sit forward, to keep the stern
high* If sculling fails us, we'll paddle like salvages."

They clambered aboard, shivering violently from their new wetting;
Ebenezer was able to pole out a hundred yards or so through shoal water
before it became necessary to fit his oar between the transom tholes and
commence sculling. Fortunately, the first mile or so was in the lee of the
island; the relative stillness of the water gave him opportunity to get the
knack of pitching the blade properly for thrust without losing his oar. But
soon the island was too far behind to shelter them: the hissing seas rolled
in astern— three, four, and five feet from trough to crest; as each overtook
them the dinghy seemed to falter, intimidated, and then actually to be
drawn backwards as if by undertow, Ebenezer would hold his breath—
surely they would be pooped! But at the last instant the stern would be
flung high and the dinghy thrust forward on the crest; the scanty freeboard
disappeared; water sluiced over both gunwales; Bertrand and McEvoy
bailed madly to keep afloat, Then the sea rushed on, and the dinghy would
seem to slide backwards into the maw of the one behind, Each wave was a
fresh tenror; it seemed unthinkable that they should survive it, and even
more that managing by some miracle to do so earned them not a second's
respite. The helmsman's job was especially arduous and tricky: though the
net motion of the dinghy was actually always forward, the approach of each
new sea had the effect of stemway; instead of sculling, Ebenezer would be
obliged to use the oar for a rudder to keep the boat from broaching to, and
moreover would have to steer backwards, since the water was moving faster
than the boat. Only at the crest could he scull for a stroke or two— but not
a moment too long, or the dinghy would yaw sickeningly in the next trough.
The men were rapidly demoralized past speech; they toiled as if possessed,
and when the moon broke the scud it lit three shocked faces staring wide-
eyed at the monster overtaking them*

To turn back, of course, was out of the question, since even if some god
should turn thetn around, they could make no windward headway. Yet
after what seemed like an hour of frantic labor and hairsbreadth escapes—
perhaps actually no more than twenty minutes— the light ahead appeared

[740] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

no closer than before. What was worse, it seemed to have moved distinctly
northward: in the beginning it had lain dead ahead, and now, though they
still moved entirely leewards, it stood well off their larboard bow. It was
Bertrand who first observed this distressing fact, and it moved him to speak
for the first time in many minutes.

"Dear Father! What if it's a ship, and there's no land for miles?"

McEvoy offered an alternative hypothesis. "Belike the wind hath swung
round a bit to, the northwest We may have to hike a few miles up the
shore."

"There's e'en a happier possibility," Ebenezer said. "I scarce dare
hope But stay! Do you hear a sound?"

They paused in their work to listen and were nearly taken under by the
next wave.

"Aye, 'tis a surf!" Ebenezer cried joyously, "Neither we nor the light have
changed course; 'tis that we're almost upon it!" What he wanted to explain
was that though from the island they had steered as directly for the light
as they were able, their actual course was somewhat to the south of it; from
four or five miles distance the error (perhaps a few hundred feet) had been
too small to notice, but as they drew very near, the angle between their
course and the light tended to increase towards ninety degre&. Before he
could elaborate, however, a wave greater than usual tossed the stern high
and to larboard and lifted the oar from its tholes.

"She's broaching to!" he warned.

The others paddled to no purpose with their shingles. Ebenezer slammed
the oar back between the pins and attempted to bring the stern into the
seas by putting the "tiller" end hard over to larboard, as he had grown
used to doing under sternway. But his action was out of phase, for the
crest had passed and left the dinghy momentarily wayless in the trough:
the motion of the oar was in fact a sculling stroke, and had the effect of
bringing the stern even farther around. The next wave struck them fair on
the starboard quarter, broached them to, and filled the boat ankle deep with
water; the one after that, a white-capped five-footer, took them square
abeam, and they were flailing once more in the icy Chesapeake. This time,
however, their ordeal was brief (happily, for none had strength enough to
stay half a minute afloat) : their feet struck seaweed and mud at once, and
they found themselves less than a dozen yards from shore. They scrambled
in, knocked down time and again by the hip-high breakers, and gained the
beach at last, scarcely able to stand.

"We must make haste!" McEvoy gasped, "We may freeze yetl"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 741 ]

As fast as they could manage, stiimbling and panting, they moved up the
shore towards their beacon, now plainly recognizable as the lighted
windows of a good-sized house. Not far from it, where the beach met the
lawn of the house, stood a tall loblolly pine, at the foot of which they saw
a conspicuous white object, like a large vertical stone. Ebenezer's hackles
suddenly tingled. "Ah God!" he cried, and summoned the last of his
strength to sprint forward and embrace the grave. The feeble moon sufficed
to show the inscription:

Anne Bowyer Cooke

b. 1645 d. 1666
Thus Far Hath the Lord

Helped Us.

The others came up behind. "What is it?"

Ebenezer would not turn his head. "My journey's done," He wept. "I
have come full circle. Yonder^ Maiden; go and save yourselves/'

Astonished, they read the gravestone, and when entreaty proved vain,
they lifted Ebenezer by main strength from the grave, Once upon his feet,
he offered them no resistance, but the last of his spirit seemed gone.

"Had I ne'er been brought to birth/' he said, pointing to the stone,
"that woman were alive today, and my sistef with her, and my father a
gentleman sot-weed planter, and the three of them living happy in yonder
house."

Bertrand was too near freezing to offer a reply, if he had any, but McEvoy
—who likewise shook from head to foot with cold— led the poet off by the
arm and said, "Go to, 'tis like the sin o' Father Adam, that we all have on
our heads; we ne'er asked for't, but there it is, and do we choose to live,
why— we must needs live with't"

Ebenezer had been used to seeing Maiden a-bustle with deplorable
activity after dark, but now only the parlor appeared to be occupied; the
rest of the house, as well as the grounds and outbuildings— he peered with
awful shame in the direction of the curing-house—was dark and quiet, As
they went up the empty lawn toward the front door, which faced south-
westwards to the grave and the Bay beyond, McEvoy, as much to warm
himself, no doubt, as to comfort Ebenezer, went on to declare through
chattering teeth that the single light was a good sign: without question it
meant that Andrew Cooke had put his house in order, had turned out the
whores and rascals, and was waiting with his daughter-in-law for news of
his prodigal son. He would be overjoyed to see them; they would be clothed

[ 742 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and fed, and alarms would be dispatched at once to Anne Arundel Town
to intercept Long Ben Avery.

''Stay." Ebenezer shook his head. "Such fables hurt too much beside the
truth/'

McEvoy released his arm angrily. "Still the virgin/' he cried, "with no
thought for any wight's loss save his own! Run down and die on yonder
grave!"

Ebenezer shook his head: he wanted to explain to his injured companion
that he suffered not from his loss alone, as did McEvoy, but from McEvoy's
loss as well, and Anna's, and Andrew's, and even Bertrand's— from the
general condition of things, in sum, for which he saw himself answerable—
and that the pain of loss, however great, was as nothing beside the pain of
responsibility for loss. The fallen suffer from Adam's fall, he wanted to
explain; but in that knowledge— which the Fall itself vouchsafed him— how
more must Adam have suffered! But he was too gripped by cold and despair
to essay such philosophy.

They reached the house.

"We'd best have a look through the window ere we knock/' Bertrand
said. "I'd liefer take my chances in the barn than fall into some villain's
hands." It is possible that he trembled from more than exposure, for he
added, "FChrist, what will Master Andrew say to me, that was sent to be
your adviser!"

They went to the lighted window of the parlor, from which, on drawing
near, they heard the sounds of masculine laughter and conversation.

McEvoy got there first. "Some men at cards," he reported, and then a
look of sudden pain came into his face. "Dear Godl Can that be poor Joan?"

Bertrand hastened up beside him. "Aye, that's the swine-maid, and

yonder's Master Andrew in the periwig, but " Now he too showed great

distress, but more in the nature of anxiety than anguish. "God's blood and
body, Master Eben!" he swore, " 'Tis Colonel Robotham!"

But Ebenezer was at the window sill by this time, and beheld for himself
these wonders and others by far more marvelous. Joan Toast, so beridden
and devoured by her afflictions that she looked a leprous Bedlamite, was
hobbling with a pitcher of ale towards a green baize table in the center of
the parlor, about whose circumference five gentlemen sat at cards: the
lawyer, physician, and minister of the gospel Richard Sowter, who sucked
on his pipe and called upon various saints to witness the wretched hand
he was being dealt; the cooper (and dealer) William Smith, who smiled
grandly at the table and with his pipestem directed Joan to fill An-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 743 ]

drew Cooke's glass; Bertrand' s portly, sanguine father-in-law from Talbot
County, Colonel George Robotham, who seemed preoccupied with some-
thing quite other than lanterloo; Andrew Cooke himself, grown thinner
and older-looking since Ebenezer had seen him last, but more sharp-eyed
than ever, grasping his cards in his good left hand and glancing like an old
eagle at the others, as if they were not his adversaries but his prey; and
finally, most appalling of all, at Andrew's withered right arm, joking as
merrily over his cards as if he were back in Locket's— Henry Burlingame,
still in the character he called "Nicholas Lowe of Talbot"!

"Very well, gentlemen/' the cooper declared, having dealt four hands.
"I share the fortunes of Mr. Sowter, I believe/'

"Put it the other way about," Burlingame remarked, "and there'll be more
truth than poetry in't when we get to court."

Sowter shook his head in mock despair. "St. Dominic's sparrow, neigh-
bors! If our case were half as feeble as this miscarriage, we'd get no farther
than the courthouse jakes with't, I swear!"

"As we all know ye shan't in any case," Burlingame taunted amiably,
"inasmuch as the only real case to argue is the size of your bribe."

"Ah, lads, go to," said Andrew Cooke. "This talk of bribes and mis-
carriages alarms the Colonel!" He smiled sardonically at Colonel Robotham.
"Do forgive my son his over-earnestness, George: 'tis a famous failing of the
lad's, as I daresay your daughter hath remarked."

Outside the window, Bertrand gasped. "D'ye hear that, Master Eben?
He called that wight his son! An entire stranger!"

"There's something amiss/' McEvoy agreed, "but they all seem peaceable
enough." Without more ado he began to rap on the windowpanes. "Hdlol
Hdlo! Let us in or we're dead men!"

"Nay, i'Christ!" cried Bertrand, but he was too late; the startled players
turned towards the window.

"Januarius's bubbling blood!"

"Look to't, Susan," the cooper ordered calmly, and Joan Toast set her
pitcher on the sideboard,

"Ebenezer, my boy," said Andrew Cooke, "fetch thy pistol." Burlingame
laid his cards face down on the baize and went to do as he was bid.

Joan Toast opened the door and thrust out a lantern. "Who is't?" she
called listlessly.

"Runt" muttered Bertrand, and lit out across the lawn.

McEvoy drew back from the window and bit his underlip nervously.
"What say ye, Eben?" he whispered, "Hadn't we best run for't?"

[ 744 I T?ra SOT-WEED FACTOR

But the poet neither moved nor made reply, for the reason that at first
sight of the strange assemblage in the parlor he had been dumfounded,
brought back (or around, as the case may be) to that vulnerable condition
of his youth which the cuisses of virginity, the cuirass of his laureateship,
were donned to shield; and when in addition he had witnessed his father
addressing Burlingame— incredibly!— as "my son" and "Ebenezer," he had
been frozen on the instant where he stood, not by the Bay wind but by
the same black breeze that thrice before— in Magdalene College, in Locket's,
and in his room in Pudding Lane— had sighed from the Pit to ice his bones.

"Who is't?" Joan repeated.

McEvoy stepped from behind Ebenezer so that the light from the parlor
window illumined his face.

"Tis I, Joan Toast," he said uncertainly. "Tis Eben Coolce and John
McEvoy. . . ."

Joan made a sound and clutched at the doorjamb; the lantern slipped
to the ground and was extinguished. A man's voice came from the vestibule
behind her. "What the Devil!"

"Haply we'd better flee, after all," McEvoy suggested. But Ebenezer, no
longer even shivering, stood transfixed in his original position.

19: THE POET AWAKENS FROM HIS DREAM OF HELL TO
BE JUDGED IN LIFE BY RHADAMANTHUS

FOR CENTURIES UPON CENTURIES, SO IT SEEMED TO EBENEZER, HE HAI>

sojourned in the realm of Lucifer, where in penance for Lust and Pride he
underwent a double torture: the first was to be transferred at short intervals
from everlasting flames to the ice of Cocytus, frozen by the wings of the
King of Hell himself; the second, less frequent but much more painful, was
to see commingled and transfused before his eyes the faces of Joan Toast
and his sister Anna. Joan would bend near him, her face unmarred and
spirited as it had been in London: her dress was fresh, her pox vanished;
her eyes were bright and tender—indeed, her face was not hers at all, but
Anna Cooke's! Then even as he watched his sister's face he saw her eyes
go red and dull, her teeth rot in the gums, her flesh go raw with suppurating
lesions— until at last, with Joan Toast's face, she became Joan Toast, where-
upon the cycle would sometimes recommence. The metamorphosis invari-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 745 ]

ably stole his breath; he would choke and cry out, thrash his arms and legs
about in the fire or the ice, whichever he chanced to be immersed in at the
time, and gibber blasphemies as obscure as Pluto's "Papb Satan aleppe . . "
It is not difficult to imagine, therefore, with what joy he found Anna quite
unaltered when at length he opened his eyes and saw her sitting near his
bed, reading a book. The very magnitude of his relief thwarted its expres-
sion, for he fell almost at once into profoundest dreamless sleep.

Upon his second awakening he was more rational; he realized that he had
been ill and delirious for some time— whether a day or a month he could
not guess— and that now his fever was gone. It pleased him no end to see
that his sister was still in attendance at his bedside, since now he was quite
able to address hen

"Dearest Anna! How very kind of you to nurse me . , ."

He spoke no further, both because his sister, weeping joyfully, rushed
from her chair to embrace him, and because he suddenly understood how
incredible it was that she should be there, apparently safe and sound!

"Ffaith, where am I?" he whispered. "How is't thou'rt here?"

"Too great a story!" Anna sobbed. "Thou'rt home in Maiden, Eben,
and God be praised thou'rt back among the living!" Without releasing him
she called through the open doorway, "Roxannel Come quick! Eben's
awake!"

"Roxanne as well?" Ebenezer closed his eyes to gather strength.

"Thou'rt weak, poor thing! Marry, if you but knew how I wept when I
learned what Captain Avery had done, and how I yearned to die with you,
and how I feared you'd perish here at Maiden and spoil the miracle-i'God,
'tis too much to tell! Four days you've hung 'twixt life and death "

Mrs. Russecks and Henrietta came in from the hall, neither evidently
the worse for their ordeal, and when their initial rejoicing subsided, the
poet learned the circumstances of their escape.

" Twas an act of God, nor more nor less," Mrs, Russecks declared simply.
"How else account for't? Long Ben Aveiy is Benjamin Long of Church
Creek, my first and long-lost lover!" Immediately after dispatching the
three male prisoners, she said, the privateer had summoned the women aft
for the avowed purpose of taking his pleasure, but as it turned out, they
suffered no more than a few prurient remarks, for upon learning first her
Christian name and then, in response to closer inquiry, her maiden sur-
name, his attitude had changed altogether: he had apologized for having
thrown the men overboard, expressed his hope that they would reach
Sharp's Island safely, and at the risk of his own life changed course for the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

mouth of the Severn River, where he had bid them adieu and returned to
his own ship, leaving Captain Cairn to ferry them singlehanded to Anne
Arundel Town!

"We don't know 'twas Benjamin Long/' Henrietta admitted. "He'd not
answer Mother's questions. But I can't account for his behavior other-
wise "

"Of course it was my Benjy," Mrs. Russecks said. "The dear boy ran off
to sea thirty years ago and turned pirate. Twas purely out o' shame he'd not
own up to't." On this point she was as calmly impervious to argument as a
Christian on the question of God's benevolence, and despite the staggering
unlikelihood of the coincidence, Ebenezer had to admit that he could think
of no hypothesis to account more reasonably for Long Ben Avery's sudden
charity. He sat up to embrace them all by turns, and his sister again and
again, whom he had given up for lost, and then lay back exhausted. His
"sojourn in Hell," he now learned, had actually lasted four days, during
which he had hung in the balance between life and death; McEvoy and
Bertrand had also been bedridden from the effects of exposure, though not
comatose. The former was now quite recovered, but Bertrand, whom they
had not located in the barn until the morning after, was still in grave
condition.

"Thank Heav'n they're alive!" Ebenezer exclaimed. "What of Father,
and Henry Burlingame, and the cooper? Do I hear them belowstairs?"
Indeed, from the rooms below came the sound of several men's voices,
apparently in argument.

"Aye," Anna said. "The fact is, they're all under house arrest till the
matter of our estate is settled! Governor Nicholson is much alarmed about
the rebellion and the opium traffic, and hath put Cooke's Point under a
sort of martial law till your recovery. In the meantime, everyone accuses
everyone else, and no man knows whose title is valid." Directly upon their
arrival in Anne Arundel Town, she explained, Captain Caim and they had
gone to the Governor's house, roused him from bed despite the hour, and
reported as much as they could piece together of their kidnaping, the
activity on Bloodsworth Island, and the vicious enterprise of which Maiden
had apparently become a regional headquarters. Thanks to the mention of
the John Smith papers and Captain Cairn's reputation as a sober citizen
of St. Mary's, Governor Nicholson had accepted their report at face value:
two armed pinnaces had been dispatched in pursuit of Captain Avery's
Phansie, and the President of the Council himself, Sir Thomas Lawrence,
had set out with the ladies for Cooke's Point before dawn, empowered by

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the Governor to act as his proxy in any matters involving the welfare of the
Province.

"And marry"— -Henrietta laughed— "what a jolly time we've had since!"
Andrew Cooke, she declared, had suffered a series of such great and am-
bivalent surprises that for a time they had feared for his sanity: to begin
with, his joy at finding Ebenezer alive had given way at once to wrath and
no small embarrassment— the latter occasioned by his having sworn to all
and sundry that "Nicholas Lowe," who in truth had befriended him a fort-
night previously and told him that Ebenezer was dead, was the red
Ebenezer Cooke, and that the so-called Laureate of Maryland who had
given Cooke's Point away was a gross impostor. How had his dismay been
compounded, then, when in the space of twenty-four hours he had learned
that his "son" was apparently a highly placed agent of the Governor's; that
Anna had been captured and freed by the notorious Long Ben Avery; and
—perhaps most disconcerting of all—that she had brought with her his old
mistress Roxanne Edouard and a young lady alleged to be his natural
daughter!

"Beside these wonders," Henrietta said, "such trifles as the Bloodsworth
insurrection are beneath his attention! Really, Brother Eben, 'tis a droll
fellow we have for a father!"

"Henrietta!" Mrs. Russecks scolded. "Let us hasten to tell Sir Thomas
that Mister Cooke is himself again, and will soon be strong enough to speak
with him." She kissed the poet quite maternally. "Thank God for that!"

Anna was greatly amused. "Henrietta is a marvelous tease," she said to
Ebenezer when they were alone again. "Roxanne hath warned her not to
call us brother and sister or speak of Father as her father, but she doth it
nonetheless to provoke him," By Roxanne's own admission, she said,
Andrew had not known when he left her in 1670 that she was carrying his
child; she had refrained from telling him lest he marry her under coercion,
and so had been doubly embittered when he returned her to her "uncle"
in Church Creek, "But ah, he loved her," Anna declared. "You should have
seen him when we came in! So overjoyed to see her, he scarce had eyes for
me, yet so ashamed of having left her-— i'faith, he was crucified by shame!
He ne'er once questioned that Henrietta was his daughter, but for days
now hath gone from begging the whole world's pardon to raging at the lot
of us as vultures and thieves, come to do him out of Maiden! Tis a pitiful
sight, Eben: we must forgive him."

Anna seemed to have been altered by her late experience: her face was
drawn and weary as before, but her voice and manner reflected a new se-

[ 748 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

renity, an acceptance of things difficult to accept— in short, a beatitude, for
like Mrs. Russecks she reminded Ebenezer of one to whom a miracle, a
vision or mystic grace, has lately been vouchsafed. The memory of their
last exchange in the hold of Captain Cairn's sloop brought the blood to
his face; he closed his eyes for shame and gripped her hand. Anna returned
the pressure as if she read his thoughts clearly, and went on in her quiet
voice to declare that despite Roxanne's coolness to Andrew's contrition,
and her assertion that Benjamin Long, or Long Ben Avery, was the only
man who ever truly won her heart, Henrietta and Anna agreed that she had
by no means lost her affection for their father; had indeed quite forgiven
him for deserting her, but was too wise to grant her pardon overhastily.

Ebenezer smiled and shook his head. He was frightfully weak, but he
could feel the balm of his good fortune working magically to restore his
strength.

"What of you and Henry, Anna?" he inquired.

Anna lowered her eyes. "We have talked/' she said, "—like this, with eyes
averted. He was as confounded as Father when I walked in with Roxanne
and Henrietta! He rejoiced at our safety and yearns to see you. I told him
privily what I could of his father and brothers, and your fears for the safety
of the Province; naturally he is ablaze with curiosity and cannot wait to set
out for Bloodsworth Island—you know how Henry is— but he won't go till
he talks to you. We've promised not to reveal his disguise, you know; even
Sir Thomas calls him 'Mr. Lowe/ and Father thinks he's the finest fellow in
the Province— he's supposed to be a friend of yours, that bemoans your
loss and agreed to help Father get Maiden back. The three of us, I suspect,
will be much embarrassed by one another for some time , . . our situation
is so hopeless . . ." She sniffed back a tear and made her voice more cheer-
ful. "The others are quite delighted with each other, or at least resigned:
Henrietta and John, Roxanne and Father; even Bertrand and the Robot-
hams have a sort of truce: the Colonel still vows that Bertiand is you and
presses his claim to Maiden for fear of scandal, and Lucy, poor thing, hath
not got long to her term and trembles at the thought of bearing a bastard.
They know very well their claim's a fraud and they're as much to blame
for't as Bertrand, but they're desperate, and Bertrand won't confess for fear
the Colonel will murther him where he lies. Tis a splendid comedy."

Ebenezer heard the sounds of new excitement downstairs: his recovery
had been announced.

"Tell me about my wife," he begged, and saw Anna try in vain to dis-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 749 ]

semble her shock at the deliberately chosen term. Tears started in her eyes,
and she shook her head shortly, almost as if shuddering.

"She hath not long to live . . ."

"Nay!" Ebenezer raised up onto his elbow. 'Where is she, Anna?"

"The sight of you and John McEvoy was too much for her," Anna said.
"She swooned in the vestibule and was fetched off to bed— 'twas another
grand moment for Father, as you can fancy, the day he learned she was
your wife (that he himself once paid six pounds to), and another when he
learned she wasn't Susan Warren but the same woman you knew in London!
He swears the match is null and void, and rants and rages; but withal he
hath not abused her, if only because Henry "

"No matter!" Ebenezer insisted; a number of people could be heard
ascending the stairs. "Quickly, prithee, Anna! What is her condition?"

"The swoon was only the last straw on her back," Anna answered soberly.
"Her— her social disease hath not improved, nor hath her need for devilish
opium, nor hath her general health, that was long since spent out in the
curing-house* Dr. Sowter hath examined her and declares she's a dying
woman."

'TGod!" the poet moaned. "I must see her at once! I'll die before her!"
Against Anna's protests he endeavored to get out of bed, but immediately
upon sitting up grew hopelessly dizzy and fell back on the pillow. "Poor
wretchl Poor saintly, martyred wretch!"

His lamentations were cut short by a commotion of visitors led by Henri-
etta Russecks, First in were his father and Henry Burlingame.

"Dear Eben!" Henry cried, hurrying up to grasp both his hands. "What
adventures are these you deserted me for?" He raised his head to Andrew,
who stood uneasily on the other side of the bed. "Nay, tell me truly, Mr.
Cooke: is't a bad son that saves a province?"

Ebenezer could only smile: his heart was full of sentiments too strong
and various to permit reply. He and his father regarded each other silently
and painfully, "I am heartily sorry, Father/' he began after a moment, but
his voice was choked at once, and he could not see through his tears.

Andrew laid his left hand on Ebenezer's brow— the first such solicitude
in the poet's memory. "I told ye once in St. Giles, Eben: to beg forgiveness
is the bad son's privilege, and to grant it the bad father's duty." To the
room in general he announced, "The lad hath fever yet. State thy business
and have done with't, Sir Thomas."

Three other men had come into the room: Richard Sowter, Colonel

[ 75° ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Robotham, and a courtly, white-wigged gentleman in his fifties who bowed
slightly to Andrew and Ebenezer in turn.

"Thomas Lawrence, sir, of the Governor's Council/' he said, "and most
honored to meet you! Pray forgive me for imposing on your rest and
recuperation, so well deserved, but none knows better than yourself how
grave and urgent is our business "

Ebenezer waved off the apology. "My sister hath apprised me of your
errand, for which thank God and Governor Nicholson! Our peril is greater
than anyone suspects, sir, and the sooner dealt with, the better for all."

"Excellent. Then let me ask you whether you think yourself strong
enough to speak this afternoon to Governor Nicholson and myself/'

"Nicholson!" Sowter exclaimed. "St. Simon's saw, sirs!" Andrew too,
and Colonel Robotham, seemed disquieted by the Council President's
words.

Sir Thomas nodded. "Mister Lowe here hath informed me that the
Governor went to Oxford yesterday and, being notified of Mister Cooke's
rescue, plans to cross to Maiden today. We expect him hourly. What say
you, sir?"

"I am quite ready and most eager to report to him," Ebenezer said.

"Very good. The Province is in your debt, sir!"

"I say " Colonel Robotham had become quite florid; his round eyes

glanced uneasily from Ebenezer to Andrew to Sir Thomas. "I've no doubt
this lad's a hero and hath business of great moment with the Governor;
I've no wish to seem preoccupied in selfish concerns or appear ungrateful
to His Majesty's secret operatives, whose work requires them to assume
false names "

"Out on't, George!" snapped Andrew. "Mister Lowe here may well be the
Governor's agent, or King William's, or the Pope's, for aught I know, but
this lad is my son Eben and there's an end on'tJ Heav'n forgive me for
conniving with Mister Lowe to deceive the lot o' ye, and Heav'n be praised
for bringing my son back from the dead, Maiden or no Maiden!"

"Enough," Sir Thomas ordered. "I remind you, Colonel, that the Prov-
ince hath no small interest in this estate; 'twas to look into it I came hither
in the beginning. If the Governor's willing, haply we can hold a hearing on
that question this very day, now Mister Cooke is with us." He further re-
minded the entire party, and especially Richard Sowter, that they were
forbidden to leave the premises until the matter had been disposed of,

"By the organ of St. Cecilia!" Sowter protested. " 'Tis an infracture o'
habeas corpus! We'll hale ye to court, sir!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 751 ]

"Your privilege/' Sir Thomas replied. "In the meantime, don't leave
Cooke's Point: Mister Lowe hath communicated with Major Trippe, and
as of this morning we have militiamen on the grounds/'

This news occasioned general surprise; Colonel Robotham tugged at his
mustache, and Sowter invoked Saints Hyginus and Polycarpus against such
highhandedness on the part of public servants. Sir Thomas then requested
everyone to leave the room except Anna, who had established herself as
her brother's nurse, and "Mister Lowe," who declared it imperative that
he not leave the key witness's bedside for a moment. Andrew seemed re-
luctant. "We shall have much to say/' Ebenezer consoled him,, "and years
to say't Just now I'm dead for want of food and sleep."

"I'll fetch broth for ye," his father grunted, and went out.

Ebenezer sighed. "He must soon be told who you are, Henry; I am sick
unto death of false identities/'

"I shall tell him," Burlingame promised, "now I know myself. Ffaith, 'tis
miraculous, Eben! I can scarcely wait to lay hands on my father's book—
what did he call it? The Book of English Devils! King of the Ahatchwhoops!
Miraculous!" He held up a tutorial finger and smiled. "But not yet, Eben:
nay, he oughtn't to know quite yet. My plan is to go to Bloodsworth Island
as soon as possible— tomorrow, if we settle our business here today— and do
what I can to pacify my father Chicamec and my brother— what was his
name?"

Ebenezer smiled despite himself at his tutor's characteristic enthusiasm.
"Cohunkowprets/* he said. "It means 'Bill-o'-the-Goose.7 "

"Cohunkowprets! Splendid name! Then I'll return here, pay court to
your sister, and sue my good friend Andrew for her hand. If he consents,
I'll tell him who I am and ask him again; if not, I'll go my way and ne'er
disturb him with the truth. Is that agreeable to the twain of you?"

Ebenezer looked to his sister for reply. It was clear to him that her private
conversations with Burlingame had dealt with matters mor6 intimate than
The Book of English Devils; he felt sure that Henry knew all that had
transpired not only between Anna and Billy Rumbly but also between
Anna and himself. She caught her breath and shook her head, keeping her
eyes down on the counterpane.

" Tis so futile, Henry . , . Whatever could come of it?" Embarrassment
kept her from speaking further.

"Nay, how can you despair after such a miracle as Eben's stumbling on
my parentage? Only let him gain his feet again and he'll solve that other
riddle for me: the Magic of the Sacred Egg-plant, or whatever!" He gave

[ 752 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

over his raillery and added seriously, "I proposed to Eben not long since
that the three of us take a house in Pennsylvania; since Nature hath decreed
that I be thwarted, and Convention hath rejected your appeal, whereas the
harm in being thwarted together? Let us live like sisters of mercy in our
own little convent— aye, I'll convert you to Cosmophilism, my new religion
for thwarted seekers after Truth, and we'll invent a gross of spiritual
exercises "

He went on in this vein until both Ebenezer and Anna were obliged to
laugh, and the tension among them was temporarily dispelled. But Anna
would not commit herself on the proposal. "Let us attend to first things
first: come back alive from Bloodsworth Island, neither scalped nor con-
verted to their religion, and we shall see what's to be done with ourselves."
She forbade further discussion of the subject, and their conversation turned
to other matters.

"What came of your pilgrimage to John Coode?" Ebenezer asked Burlin-
game.

"Ah, my friend, you've much to forgive me for! How can I excuse myself
for having deceived you so often, save that I put no faith in innocence?
And to plead thus is but to offend you farther . . ."

"No longer/' Ebenezer assured him. "My innocence these days is
severely technical! But what of Coode? Did you find him to be the savior
you took him for?"

Burlingaine sighed. "I ne'er found him at all." It had been his intention,
he said, to establish himself as Coode's lieutenant (in the role of Nicholas
Lowe), the better to learn what truth might lie in certain current rumors
that Coode was organizing slaves and disaffected Indians for another
rebellion, to be staged before Nicholson could institute proceedings against
him on the evidence of the 1691 Assembly Journal But in St. Mary's City,
on the morning after the same stormy night that had carried Ebenezer to
Bloodsworth Island, Burlingame had encountered Andrew Cooke himself,
who he thought had crossed from Captain Mitchell's place to the Eastern
Shore. By discreet inquiry, he learned that Andrew had fallen in with
Colonel Robotham at Captain Mitchell's, and upon hearing the Colonel
refer to Ebenezer as "my son-in-law in St. Mary's," had hastened to in-
vestigate as soon as he recovered from the shock,

"Well, friend," Burlingame went on, 44I know now 'twas our man Ber-
trand at the bottom oft, but at the time I scarce knew what to think; I'd
searched all night in vain for you and finally got word that Captain Cairn
had sailed at dusk with the Laureate of Maryland and some long skinny

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 753 ]

fellow and was thought to be drowned in the storm. Your father had learned
the state of things at Maiden and was at his wit's end for loss of both his
heirs and his estate." When it had seemed likely that Ebenezer was either
dead or lost from sight, Burlingame had introduced himself to Andrew as
Nicholas Lowe, "a steadfast friend of the Laureate/7 and declared further
that it was he who had posed as Ebenezer, the better to cover his friend's
escape. This news had redoubled Andrew's wrath; for some moments Bur-
lingame had expected to be assaulted where he stood (in Vansweringen's
Tavern). In order to pacify him, therefore, console him in some measure for
his loss, and at the same time put himself in a better position to hear news
of the twins and pursue his complex interests, Burlingame had made an
ingenious proposal: he would continue to pose as Andrew's son; they would
go to Cooke's Point together, declare both the grantor of Maiden and the
husband of Lucy Robotham to be gross impostors, and so refute the claims
of colonel and cooper alike,

"Thus came we hither arm in arm, the best of friends, and save for one
fruitless visit to Church Creek to chase down a rumor I caught wind of—
you know the story? Is't not ironic?— save for that visit, I say, here we've
sat to this day, waiting for word from you or Anna. As for the estate, Andrew
and I threaten Smith and Sowter, and they threaten us in return, and of
late the Colonel hath been threatening the lot of us; but no one durst go
to court lest he lose his breeches, the case is such a tangle, or lest he find
himself answerable for the whores and opium. What old Andrew's con-
nection with them might be, if he hath any, e'en I can't judge."
"Thou'rt not John Coode thyself?" Anna asked half seriously.
Henry shrugged. "I have been, now and again, and Lord Baltimore as
well; for that matter, I was once Francis Nicholson himself for half a day,
and three Mattawoman tarts were ne'er the wiser. But this I'll swear: albeit
'tis hard for me to think such famous wights are pure and total fictions, to
this hour IVe not laid eyes on either Baltimore or Coode. It may be they
are all that rumor swears: devils and demigods, whichever's which; or it may
be they're simple clotpolls like ourselves, that have been legend'd out of
reasonable dimension; or it may be they're naught but the rumors and tales
themselves/'

"If that last is so/' Ebenezer said, "Heav'n knows 'twere a potent life
enough! When I reflect on the weight and power of such fictions beside my
own poor shade of a self, that hath been so much disguised and counter-
feited, methinks they have tenfold my substance!"
Burlingame smiled approval. "My lad hath gone to school with a better

[754] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

tutor than his old one! In any case, Francis Nicholson exists, that is neither
a Coode nor a Calvert, and he counts Nick Lowe as the cleverest spy he
knows. 'Twere indiscreet to press me farther/'

There were still a number of questions on Ebeneze/s mind, but at this
point the cook— whom he recognized as the old Parisian trollop who had
wept at his wedding—brought up his beef broth, and Burlingame took the
opportunity to excuse himself.

"I must see to't the Governor's not murthered on your property, my
dears." He kissed Anna lightly and unabashedly on the mouth, as husband
kisses wife, and then, to the poet's surprise, kissed him also, but discreetly,
upon the forehead, more as father might kiss son or, in more demonstrative
latitudes, brother might kiss brother. "Thank almighty Zeus thou'rt back
amongst the living!" he murmured. "Did I not once say there'd be great
commotion at thy fall?"

Ebenezer protested with a smile that, ruined and spent though he was
indubitably, as yet he was not officially among the fallen, nor did it appear
likely that he would ever join their number. Burlingame responded with a
characteristic shrug and departed.

"Heav'n knows our other problems are far more grave," Anna sighed,
"but I cannot give o'er my concern for that man and for the three of us!"
"Will you marry him?" asked her brother.

Anna too shrugged her shoulders. "What is the use oft? As well go off
with him, as I did with his brother, and live in sin." So peculiarly inapposite
was the phrase, under the circumstances, that both twins had to smile. But
then Anna shook her head. "What I most fear is that he'll not return from
Bloodsworth Island."

This notion surprised Ebenezer. "You fear Billy Rumbly might do him
in from jealousy? I'd not thought of that."

"Nay," said Anna. "Formidable as Billy may be, he is no match for
Henry, and there's the danger."

Ebenezer saw her point and shivered: how slight and qualified were
Henry's ties to the cause of Western Civilization (to say nothing of English
colonialism!), than which his mind and interests were so enormously more
complex that it seemed parochial by comparison! Had he not already been
a pirate and perhaps an agent for Heaven knew what Satanic conspiracy?
Had he not extolled the virtues of every sort of perversity, and pointed out
to Ebenezer man's perennial fascination with violence, destruction, and
rapine? It was by no means unthinkable that, whatever his present intention,
Burlingame would remain on Bloodsworth Island to ally his wits with those

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 755 ]

of Drepacca and Quassapelagh; and with three so canny,, potent adversaries
—not to mention John Coode and the shadowy Monsieur Casteene— God
help the English colonies in Americal

The broth did wonders for his strength; when he had finished it he sent
Anna to express his contrition to Joan Toast and beg her to allow him an
interview.

"She refuses," Anna reported a minute later. "She says she hath no
quarrel with me, but wishes to die without having to endure the sight of
another man. Not e'en Dr. Sowter may come near her anymore."

As always upon hearing news of her, Ebenezer was stung to the heart
with shame. Nevertheless he took it as a good sign that Joan had least not
sunk into apathy: where belligerence lingered, he declared to Anna, life
lingered also, and while his wife lived he did not abandon the hope, not of
winning her forgiveness, to which he felt no title, but of demonstrating in
her presence the extent of his wretchedness at having deserted her. In the
meantime he summoned McEvoy, who after commiserating with him for
Joan's condition, shaking his head at the miraculous coincidence of Long
Ben Avery's identity (which he said quite substantiated Ebenezer's charge
that Life is a shameless playwright), and rejoicing at the ladies' safety, as-
sisted the poet down the hall to the chamber he shared with Bertrand
Burton.

"The poor wretch bolted, don't ye know, for fear Colonel Robotham and
your father would have his arse, and what with Joan swooned away in the
vestibule, and yourself froze up like marble, and all the stir and commotion,
they ne'er found him till morning, near dead of cold. E'en so they meant
to put him with the servants, but Mister Lowe and I persuaded 'em to
bed him with me, I fear the cold hath got to him, poor devil."

They found the valet awake, but far from healthy. His cheeks, though
fanned with fever to an unnatural red, were pinched and drawn; his nose
was more sharp than ever, and angled like a Semite's at the bridge; his eyes
no longer pronounced with awe, "There's a deal goes on that your honest
wight ne'er dreams of: round as always, and protruding, they looked luster-
less past his beak like a sick owl's eyes. Indeed, the cold had "got to him."
Jut as Burlingame had hurried forward to Ebenezer's bedside, so now the
poet hastened to his valet's,

"Poor fellow! You ought ne'er to have left us!"

Bertrand smiled wryly. "I ought ne'er to have left Pudding Lane, sir," he
said, his voice half croak and half whisper. "Your servingman had better
face his Ralph Birdsalls than play at Laureates and Advisers, whatever his

[756] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

gifts. Hadn't we a lark, though, the day we were Drakepecker's gods and
thought we'd found the golden city?"

Ebenezer wanted to protest that his servant was talking like a doomed
man, but he checked himself lest the figure be read for a prophecy.

"Indeed, that was a splendid day," he agreed. "And we shall have many
another, Bertrand, you and I." He assured his man that neither Andrew nor
himself felt anything but solicitude for his infirmity, from which they all
prayed for his swift recovery; while they regretted his having gambled away
the title to Maiden and having wed Lucy Robotham under false pretenses,
they appreciated his good intentions in both instances and had no fear of
losing Cooke's Point on his account. "As for the Colonel, he hath cause
enough to be wrathful, and Lucy's case is pitiful enough, but Heaven knows
they brought it upon themselves! In any case, they shan't lay a hand upon
you. Get you well, man, and advise me, or let me freight you back to Betsy
Birdsall!"

But the valet was not to be drawn from his mood: he sighed and, rendered
incoherent by his fever, spoke unintelligibly of ratafia, Great Bears, and
women's wiles. He would express quite lucidly his chagrin at not having
guessed Betsy Birdsall's scheme to save him by unmanning her husband,
and almost in the same breath begin to rave about Cibola, the Fortunate
Islands, and the Sunken Land of Buss.

"Ye must own," he said slyly at one point, "I had some knack for playing
poet. . . ."

"No knack, i'faith," Ebenezer wept. "A very genius!"

Bertrand lapsed once more into mild delirium, and at Anna's suggestion
the two men left him to be attended by her and Mrs. Russecks, who under
Richard Sowter's supervision had assumed responsibility for all of Maiden's
invalids. Ebenezer returned to his own room for a short nap, after which,
and a heartier refection than his first, he declared himself ready to report if
need be to God Himself.

"Then I shall send for Governor Nicholson to come up," replied Burlin-
game, to whom he had made the boast. "He arrived while you slept and
hath given everyone the vapors by refusing to hear a word about the estate
ere he speaks with you. But I resolved to make him wait till you had done
eating."

Despite his apprehension at meeting the Governor, Ebenezer had to
smile. "Did I tell you that your brother hath that same maddening habit?"

"Nay, that's marvelous! Hath he really? I cannot wait to end this tire-
some business and fly to him!"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 757 ]

On this ambiguous note Henry went belowstairs; he returned very shortly
afterwards in the wake of Francis Nicholson, Royal Governor of the Prov-
ince of Maryland, a man of Burlingame's brief height and robust frame,
though a dozen years older and somewhat gone to stomach. He had the
plum-velvet breeches, the great French periwig, the fastidious manicure,
and the baby-pink face of a dandy; but his great jaw and waspish eyes, the
snap of his voice and the brusqueness of his manner, belied all foppery.
He strode into the room without asking leave, leaned heavily upon his
silver-headed stick, and peered at the patient through his glasses with a
mixture of eagerness, curiosity, and skepticism, as if Ebenezer were one of
those stranded whales to which his royal commission gave him title, and he
was not certain whether the oil would be worth the flensing. Burlingame
stood by, amused; Sir Thomas Lawrence, catching up breathlessly to the
others, closed the door behind him.

"Good evening to you, Your Excellency/' Ebenezer ventured. "I am
Ebenezer Cooked

" 'Sheart, ye had better be!" cried the Governor. His air was curt but not
unkind, and he laughed along with the others. "So this is Charles Calvert's
laureate, that we hear such a deal about!"

"Nay, Your Excellency, 'twas ne'er an honest title "

"The Governor will have his jest," interposed Sir Thomas. "Mister Lowe
hath apprised us already of the circumstances of your commission, Mister
Cooke, and the sundry trials and impostures wherewith it burthened you."
"Tis not a bad idea at that," declared Nicholson, "albeit Til wager old
Baltimore did it merely to play at being king. Only give me time to found
myself a college in Annapolis— that's what I call Anne Arundel Town-
just grant me a year to build a school there, and whether these penny-
pinching clotpolls like it or no, we'll have ourselves a book or two in Mary-
land! Aye, and belike a poet may find somewhat to sing about then, eh,
Nick?"

"I daresay," Burlingame replied, and added, upon the Governor's further
inquiring, that he had established communication with a certain Virginia
printer and, in accordance with Nicholson's directive, was endeavoring to
hire the fellow away from Governor Andros to set up shop in Maryland.
For a time it looked as if Ebenezer had been forgotten, but without tran-
sition the Governor turned to him— indeed, turned on him, so formidable
was the man's usual expression— and demanded to hear without more ado
the details of "this fantastical story of slaves and salvages." His apparent
skepticism put the poet off at first— he commenced the story falteringly and

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

with misgivings, almost doubting its truth himself— but he soon discovered
that the Governor's incredulity was only a mannerism. "Absurd!" Nicholson
would scoff on being told that Drepacca was in communication with the
northern chiefs, but his pink brow would darken with concern; by the time
he called the story of Burlingame's true name and parentage "a bold-arsed
fraud and turdsome lie/' Ebenezer was able to translate the obscenities
accurately to read "the damn'dest miracle I e'er heard tell of!" In short,
though he protested his utter disbelief at every pause in the poet's relation,
Ebenezer felt confident, as did Burlingame, that he accepted every word of
it: not only the grand perils of the Negro-Indian conspiracy and the traffic
in whores and narcotics, but also such details as the illicit trade in redemp-
tioners practised by Slye and Scurry, the depredations of Andros's "coast
guard" Thomas Pound (upon learning of which he rubbed his hands in
delighted anticipation of embarrassing his rival), and the duplicity of the
Poseidon's Captain Meech— whom, ironically, Nicholson had recently hired
to cruise against illegal traders in the provincial sloop Speedwell.

"Sweet Mother o' Christ!" he swore at the end. "What a nest o' wolves
and vipers I'm sent to govern!" He turned to his lieutenants. "What say ye,
gentlemen: shall we make for Barbados and leave this scurfy province to the
heathen? And you, you wretch!" He aimed his stick at Burlingame. "You
go about posing as a proper Talbot gentleman, and all the while thou'rt a
bloody salvage prince! Marry come up! Marry come up!"

Burlingame winked at Ebenezer. For some moments Governor Nicholson
paced about the bedroom, stabbing at the floorboards with his stick. At
length he stopped and glared at his Council President

"Well, damn it, Tom, can we prosecute this Coode or not? Twill be one
rascal the less to deal with, and then we can look to arming the militia."
Aside to Ebenezer he confessed, "If the truth be known, weVe more balls
in our breeches than we have in the bloody armory."

Sir Thomas appealed to Burlingame for a reply and received a tongue-
lashing from His Excellency for having to get his answers from "a red-
skinned spy."

"We can prosecute whene'er we find him, sir," Burlingame declared, 'T>ut
we'll need to choose our judges with care, and e'en so there's a chance
he'll get off lightly." One portion of the 1691 Assembly Journal, the Prov-
ince's most damning evidence against Coode and the "Protestant Asso-
ciators," had yet to be retrieved, he explained; though its relevance to the
tale of his own ancestry was presumably slight (it was that portion of Sir
Henry Burlingame's Privie Journdl which dealt, so William Smith had

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 759 ]

vaguely averred, with the Englishmen's escape from the Emperor Powha-
tan), its importance as evidence might be very great indeed. "Tis in the
possession of that loutish cooper belowstairs," he concluded, "who will not
part with't for love nor money. Howbeit, we may threaten it loose from
him yet, and once I've seen it we shall look for the Reverend General
Coode."

"We shall have it, right enough," Nicholson muttered, "ere this day is
done. If I'm to be massacred by the heathen, I want to see that rascal
Coode in Hell before me."

"There's a more worrisome business," said Burlingame. "You know as
well as I that if the Negroes and salvages take a mind to, they can murther
every white man in America by spring— more especially with three or four
good generals." It was his intention, he said, to go in any case to Bloods-
worth Island as soon as possible and present himself to the Tayac Chicamec
and Cohunkowprets; there was every chance that they would doubt his
identity, as he had no proof of it, but if by some miracle they should be-
lieve him, he would endeavor to depose his brother and set Quassapelagh
and Drepacca against each other. Faction and intrigue, he was convinced,
were the only weapons that could save the English until their position was
considerably stronger in America.

"Ye'll not live past your preamble," Nicholson scoffed. "The brutes are
slow, but1 they're not stupid enough to bow to any Englishman that strolls
in and declares he's their king,"

"Ah, well, 'tis not a role that any Englishman could play. Not that I
claim any special talent, sir— on the contrary, this role wants a most par-
ticular shortcoming, doth it not, Eben?" He proceeded to describe quite
candidly the congenital infirmity which he had inherited from Sir Henry
Burlingame, his grandfather, and which he meant to employ by way of
credentials on Bloodsworth Island. The Governor was astonished, sympa-
thetic, and vulgarly amused by turns: he declared that the stratagem would
surely fail nonetheless if the Indians had even one self-respecting skeptic
in their number— "D'ye think old Ulysses would have scrupled to eunuch
Sinon if he'd judged it to his purpose?" he demanded— but for the present,
at least, he could offer no better proposal. He turned to Ebenezer, all the
surliness gone for once from his face and manner, and asked, "Have ye aught
else to tell me now, my boy? Ye have not? God bless ye, then, for your
courage and reward ye for your trials: if thou'rt half as much a poet as
thou'rt a man, ye deserve a better laureateship than Maryland's."

And having extended himself so vulnerably into sentiment, he retreated

[ jfo ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

into character before the poet could find words to express his gratitude.
"Now then, Tom, I want every wight and trollop on the premises assembled
in the parlor, saving only that one poor devil that's mad with his fever.
We'll hold us a find court-baron here and now, as Charlie Calvert was
wont to do when things grew tame, and rule on the patent to this estate
ere moonrise."

"Very well, sir!" replied Sir Thomas. ''But I must remind you what Judge
Hammaker "

"My arse to Hammaker, let him take a toast in't!" cried the Governor,
and Ebenezer could not help recalling a certain libelous story once told him
by Bertrand. "Stir thy stumps, there, Nicholas me lad— nay, what is't, now?
Henry? FChrist, a fit name for a codless Machiavel! Ring in the parishioners
to be judged, Henry Burlingame: Tom here shall play old Minos, and I'll
be Rhadamanthus!"

20: THE POET COMMENCES HIS DAY IN COURT

INASMUCH AS THE QUESTION OF MALDEN^S OWNERSHIP HAD BEEN UPPER-

most in everyone's mind for several days at least, it was not long before Gov-
ernor Nicholson was able to call his extraordinary court to order in the front
parlor— that same room into which the castaways had peered some four
nights previously. All the interested parties were present, including at least
one who seemed to wish he were somewhere else: two troopers of the Dor-
chester County Militia, it was made known, had intercepted William Smith
on the beach not far from the house, and the discomfort in his face belied his
solemn avowal that he had sought only a breath of fresh air. The two judges
established themselves at the green baize table with their backs to the
hearth and arranged the others in a large half circle about them; Henry
Burlingame was equipped with paper and quill and stationed on Nichol-
son's left, opposite Sir Thomas, whence he surveyed the assembled com-
pany with interest and vast amusement.

Ebenezer, who had taken the trouble to dress himself for the occasion,
sat upon the arm of Anna's chair on the extreme right of the semicircle (as
viewed from the judges7 position) ; though he naturally desired that the title
to Cooke's Point should return to his father, all his past anxiety had been
washed out of him by the great events and revelations of his recent past:

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 761 ]

his excitement was that of pure anticipation, different only in degree from
what he'd felt some months before in the courtyard at Cambridge. In keep-
ing with her new tranquility, Anna had brought a piece of needlework with
her, which seemed to absorb her whole attention; one would have thought
her altogether uninterested in the disposition of the estate. On her right
sat Andrew Cooke, smoking his pipe so fiercely and steadily that the wreath-
ing smoke seemed to come not from his mouth but through his pores, from
the heart of the man himself. From time to time he cast great frowning
glances at his two children, as if afraid they might vanish before his eyes or
change into someone else; for the rest, he stared impatiently ahead at the
green baize table and sipped at a glass of the rum that Nicholson had
ordered served around.

Never once did he turn his eyes to the leather couch beside him, where
sat Roxanne Russecks, Henrietta, and John McEvoy, though his very avoid-
ance proved him much aware of the lady's presence. There was gossip, Anna
had reported to Ebenezer, of a reconciliation between the old lovers.
Neither of them would speak of the matter directly— Roxanne protested
her eternal devotion to the memory of Benjamin Long, and Andrew pro-
tested his to the memory of Anne Bowyer Cooke— but the miller's widow,
for all her serenity, was uncommonly full of life; her brown eyes flashed,
and she seemed always to be relishing some private joke. And Andrew,
when his daughter had extolled Roxanne's virtues, upbraided him for
deserting such a prize, declared her affection for Henrietta, and assured
him that neither she nor Ebenezer would consider his remarriage an affront
to their mother's sacred memory— Andrew had been covered with confusion
and, without affirming or denying the rumors, had advised Anna to look to
her own betrothal before arranging his. Ebenezer had not realized thitherto
that his father was not so hopelessly ancient after all, but a mere mid-fifty or
thereabouts— no older to Burlingame, for example, than Burlingame was
to the twins-— and still quite virile-looking despite his greying beard, his
withered arm, and his late ill-health, which had left him gaunt-faced as an
eagle.

Beside Roxanne, in the middle of the group, sat the reunited lovers
Henrietta and John McEvoy, about whom there were no rumors at all:
they made no secret of their feelings for each other, and everyone assumed
that their betrothal would soon be announced. On their right along the
other arc sat Richard Sowter, William Smith, Lucy Robotham, and the
Colonel, her father, in that order— rather, all sat except Colonel Robotham,
florid to the point of apoplexy, who fussed hither and thither behind the

] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

chair in which his daughter scowled with shame, her condition well advanced
beyond disguise. The cooper glowered at his shoes and nodded impatiently
from time to time at whatever Sowter whispered him: he would not look at
all towards Ebenezer, or towards the militiaman in Scotch cloth, musket
at the ready, whom Nicholson had promoted to sergeant-at-arms five
minutes previously.

For want of a gavel, the Governor rapped the edge of the table with his
stick.

"Very well, dammee, this court-baron is called to order. Our trusted
friend Nick Lowe hath devised a clever code for taking down the spoken
word, and on the strength oft we here appoint him clerk of this court/'

Ebenezer saw a manifold opportunity in the situation. "IFt please Your
Excellency " he ventured.

"It doth not," snapped Nicholson. "Ye'll have ample time to speak thy
piece anon."

" Tis with regard to the clerk/' Ebenezer insisted, and drew raised eye-
brows from the bench as well as from the semicircle. "In view of the extraor-
dinary complexity of the business at hand, wherein the matter of identities
hath such importance, methinks 'twere wise to establish a firm principle at
the outset: that no actions be taken by the Court or testimony heard save
under the true and bona fide identities of all concerned, lest doubt be cast
on the legality of the Court's rulings. To this end I request Your Excellency
to appoint and swear the clerk by's actual name."

Anna was understandably alarmed by this proposal, and the others—
especially Andrew— were perplexed by it; but both Nicholson and Sir
Thomas clearly appreciated the poet's strategy of establishing a precedent
favorable to his case, and with a little nod Burlingame signaled his approval
of Ebenezefs other intention.

"Unquestionably the wisest procedure," Nicholson agreed, and declared
to the room: "Be't known that Nicholas Lowe is our good friend's nom de
guerre, as't were, and we here appoint him clerk o' the court under his true
name, Henry Burlingame the Third— do I have it right, Henry?"

Burlingame affirmed the identification with another nod, but his at-
tention, like the twins', was on Andrew Cooke, who had gone white at
mention of the name.

"Marry come up!" laughed McEvoy, unaware of the situation. "Is't
really you, Heniy? There's no end o' miracles these days! Did ye hear,
Henrietta "

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 763 ]

Henrietta hushed him; Andrew had risen stiffly to his feet, glaring at
Burlingame.

"As God is my witness!" he began, and was obliged to pause and swallow
several times to contain his emotion. "I will see thee in Hell, Henry Burlin-
game "

He actually advanced a step towards the table as if to assault his enemy
then and there. Ebenezer moved forward and caught his arm.

"Sit down, Father: you've no just quarrel with Henry, nor ever did have.
Tis I you must rail at, not Henry and Anna/'

Andrew stared at his son's face incredulously, and at the hand that re-
strained him; but he made no move to go farther. Ebenezer blushed at his
own temerity and released his grip at once.

"Aye, go to, Andrew/' said Mrs. Russecks. "Thou'rt the defendant in
that affair, not the plaintiff. For that matter, a deceiver hath little ground to
complain of deception."

4*I quite agree!" said Colonel Robotham, and then cleared his throat
uncomfortably under a whimsical look from Burlingame.

Nicholson rapped for order, "Ye may settle your private differences
anon/* he declared. "Be seated, Mister Cooke."

Andrew did as he was bade; Roxanne leaned over to whisper something
in his ear, and Anna patted her brother's hand admiringly. Ebenezer's pulse
was still fast, but a wink from Henry Burlingame warmed his heart. A mo-
ment later, however, it was his turn to be shaken: the French kitchen-
woman came to the door with a whispered message, which was relayed to
the Governor by the militiamen who blocked her entry; it seemed to consist
of two parts, the first of which he acknowledged with a nod, the second
with an oath*

"Yell be pleased to know, Madame Russecks," he announced, "thy
friend Captain Avery hath given us the slip and is on his way to Philadel-
phia, where I'm sure he'll find snug harbor and no dearth o' companions."

Roxanne replied that neither her old affection for Long Ben Avery nor
her recent obligation to him blinded her to the viciousness of his piracies;
she would thank His Excellency to recall that it was she who had reported
Avery 's whereabouts, and not to embarrass her by insinuations of a relation-
ship that did not exist,

"I quite agree/' said Andrew. Ebenezer and Anna exchanged glances of
surprise, and the Governor, who seemed impressed by Roxanne's spirit,
nodded his apologies.

"I am farther advised that one of our invalids hath requested to join us,

[ 764 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

and inasmuch as Mr. Burlingame believes her to be a material witness on
sundry points, I shall ask him to assist the sergeant-at-arms in fetching her
down ere we commence/'

Andrew, Roxanne, Henrietta, John McEvoy— all looked soberly at
Ebenezer, whose features the news set into characteristic turmoil. For some
moments he feared another onset of immobility, but at sight of Joan, borne
in on the arms of her escorts like some wretch fetched fainting from a
dungeon, he sprang from the chair arm.

"Ah God!"

All the men rose murmuring to their feet; Andrew touched his son's arm
and cleared his throat once or twice by way of encouragement. It was in-
deed a disquieting sight: Joan's face and garments were free of dirt— Anna
and Roxanne had seen to that— but her face was welted by disease, her
teeth were in miserable condition, and her eyes— those brown eyes that
had flashed so excellently in Locket's— were red and ruined. She was no
older than Henrietta Russecks, but her malaise, together with her coarse
woolen nightdress and tangled coiffure, made her look like a witch or an
ancient Bedlamite. McEvoy groaned at the spectacle* Lucy Robotham
covered her eyes and whimpered, Richard Sowter sniffed uncomfortably,
and his client refused to look at all. Joan being too infirm to sit erect, she
was wrapped in blankets on the couch by Henrietta, whose self-conscious
solicitude suggested that McEvoy had kept no secrets from her.

Not until she was settled on the couch did Joan acknowledge Ebenezer's
anguished presence with a stare. "God help and forgive me!" the poet cried.
He threw himself to his knees before the couch, pressed her hand to his
mouth and wept upon it, meanwhile burying his face against her side to
avoid her eyes.

"Order! Order!" commanded Nicholson. 'Te may sit beside your wife if
ye choose, Mister Cooke, but we'll ne'er have done with our business if we
don't commence it. Whatever ill the wretch hath done ye, Mrs. Cooke, 'tis
plain he's sorry for't. Do ye wish him to change place with Mrs. Russecks
or leave ye be?"

"If wishes were buttercakes, beggers might bite'' Joan replied, but
though the proverb was tart, her voice was weak and hoarse* "I ne'er fared
worse than when I wished for my supper!'

"Whate'er ye please, then, Mister Cooke," the Governor said, "But
smartly."

Mrs. Russecks drew Ebenezer to the place she had vacated, by Joan's
head, and herself took the chair offered her by Andrew Cooke, who regarded

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 765 ]

his son gravely. Out of range of her eyes, Ebenezer retained Joan's spiritless
hand in his own; he could not bear to look at the rest of the company, but
to the left of him he heard Anna's needles clicking busily, and the sounds
went into him like nails.

"Now," said Nicholson dryly, "I trust we may get on with our business.
The clerk will please give the oath to Andrew Cooke and commence the
record/'

"That man shan't swear me," Andrew declared. Td as lief take oath from
the Devil."

"Any wight that won't stand forward and be sworn," Nicholson threat-
ened, "forfeits his claim to his miserable estate here and now, and we'll
proceed without him."

Thus coerced, Andrew grudgingly took the oath.
"I object, Your Excellency," said Sowter. "The witness failed to raise
his right hand."

"Objection be damned!" the Governor answered. "He can no more raise
his hand than Henry here his cod, as any but a blackguard or an addlepate
might see. Now sit ye down, Mister Cooke: inasmuch as the lot of ye have
some interest in the case and we've no regular courthouse to hear it in, I
here declare this entire parlor to be our witness-box. Ye may answer from
your seats."

"But St. Rosalie's kneebones, Your Excellency," Sowter protested. "Who
is the accused and who the plaintiff?"

The Governor held a brief conference on this point with Sir Thomas
Lawrence, who then announced that, owing to the unusual complexity of
the claims and allegations, the proceedings would begin in the form of an
inquest, to be turned into a proper trial as soon as issues were clarified.
" Tis no more than all of us were wont to do under the Lord Proprietary,"
he maintained, and Nicholson added that inasmuch as his preliminary in-
quiries had persuaded him that all the claims were more or less fraudulent
and all the claimants more or less loathesome, no one need fear favoritism
on the part of the Court; if anyone challenged the legality of the proceed-
ings, he was free to appeal the rulings to the Lords Commissioners of Trade
and Plantations. Sowter made no further objections, even when, as if to
tempt him, Nicholson took the extraordinary step of administering the oath
to everyone in the room simultaneously, obliging them to join hands in a
chain from Burlingame, who held the Bible, and recite in chorus.

"Now, then, Mister Andrew Cooke " He consulted a document on

the table before him, "Do I understand that on the fifth day of March, in

[j66] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

1662, you acquired this tract of land from one Thomas Manning and Grace
his wife for the sum of seven thousand pounds of tobacco, and that subse-
quently ye raised this house on't?"

Andrew affirmed the particulars of the transaction.

"And is it true that from 1670 till September last this property was
managed for ye by one Benjamin Spurdance?"

"Aye."

"Where is this Spurdance?" Nicholson asked Burlingame. "Oughtn't he
to be here?"

"We're endeavoring to find him," Henry said. "He seems to have dis-
appeared somewhere."

Andrew then testified, in answer to the Governor's inquiries, that on the
first of April, at his orders, Ebenezer had embarked from Plymouth to take
full charge of the plantation, and— grudgingly— that for reasons of con-
venience he had given his son full power of attorney in all matters pertinent
thereto.

"And did he then, in the Circuit Court at Cambridge last September,
grant Cooke's Point free and clear to William Smith?"

"Aye and he did, by good St. Wenceslaus," Sowter put in firmly. "Your
Excellency hath the paper to prove it."

"He was deceived!" Andrew shouted. "In the first place he had no idea
'twas Maiden, and what's more he had no authority to dispose of the
property!"

"I fail to see why not," Sowter argued. "What matter could be more
pertinent to the business of a planter than disposing of his plantation?"

Here Colonel Robotham joined the battle, "This entire question is be-
side the point, Your Excellency! The wight that granted Cooke's Point to
Smith was an arrant impostor, as Mr. Cooke himself hath admitted, and
my daughter's claim hath priority in any case—the red Ebenezer Cooke
lost the property on a shipboard wager to the Reverend George Tubman
in June, arid Tubman conveyed the title to my daughter ere ever this other
hoax was perpetrated!"

"A bald-arsed lie!" cried Sowter, and Andrew agreed.

Nicholson stood up and pounded his stick on the floor. "That will quite
do, dammee! The inquest is finished!"

Even Burlingame was astonished by this announcement

"'Tis scarce begun!" protested Andrew. "You've not heard aught oft
yet!"

"Ye'll refrain from speaking out of order," said the Governor, "or be

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 767 ]

removed from this courtroom. We said at the outset that directly we found
a clear defendant we'd end the inquest and commence the trial. The in-
quest is done/'

Andrew beamed. "Then you agree I'm the true defendant, and 'tis for
these thieves to prove their lying claims?"

"Not a bit oft/' Nicholson answered. "I am the defendant— that is to
say, the Province o' Maryland. We here confiscate the house and grounds
together, dammee, and 'tis for the lot o' ye to show cause why we oughtn't
to hold 'em in His Majesty's name."

"On what grounds?" Sowter demanded. " Tis a travesty o' justice!"

Nicholson hesitated until Burlingame, who was clearly delighted by the
move, whispered something to him.

" Tis for the welfare o' the Province and His Majesty's plantations in
America/' he said then, "This house is alleged to be the center of a vicious
traffic, which same traffic is alleged in turn to be managed by seditious and
treasonable elements in the Province. Tis entirely within our rights as
Governor to confiscate the property of traitors and suspected traitors pend-
ing trial o1 the charges against 'em/'

"St. Sever's tan yard! There are no charges against anyone!"

"Quite so/' the Governor agreed. "Twere unjust to bring so grave a
charge in a special court and without a hearing. In short, the lot o' ye are
under house arrest for sedition pending your hearing, and there'll be no
hearing till we settle the title to this estate!"

Sir Thomas himself was plainly dazzled by this casuistry*

"It hath no precedent!*' the Colonel complained.

"On the contrary/' Nicholson said triumphantly. "Tis the very trick
Justice Holt employed for King William to snatch the charter o' Maryland
from Baltimore."

The confiscation was promptly made official: Sir Thomas's status was
changed from judge to counsel for the defense; Andrew, William Smith,
and Lucy Robotham were named joint plaintiffs; and the case of Cooke et
d, v. Maryland was declared open.

" 'Sheart, now!" laughed the Governor. "There's a piece o' courtsman-
ship to remember!" He then ruled that Colonel Robotham, as Lucy's
counsel, should be heard first, since his claim antedated the others. The
Colonel, much ill at ease, repeated the particulars of the gaming aboard
the Poseidon, the final wager made prior to the Laureate's capture, by virtue
of which the title to Cooke's Point passed to the Reverend George Tubman

[ y68 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

of Port Tobacco parish, the Reverend Tubman's marriage to Lucy (subse-
quently annuled as bigamous), her acquisition of the title to Cooke's
Point, and finally her marriage to the Laureate himself.

"I know that rascal Tubman," Sir Thomas allowed. " Twas his lecherous
friend Peregrine Cony that married 'em, and both have been reported
to the Bishop/'

Nicholson grunted. "Now see here, Colonel Robotham, thou'rt a re*
sponsible man for all ye once served with Coode and Governor Copley;
if I hadn't thought ye a friend o' Justice I'd ne'er have made ye Judge o' the
Admiralty Court last fall. Thou'rt an honest man and a just one: a credit
to the wretched Province . . ."

"I thankee, sir," muttered the Colonel "Heav'n knows I crave naught
save justice "

"Then lookee yonder at that skinny fellow on the couch and admit he is
no more thy daughter's husband than I am, nor is he the wight that made
the wager with George Tubman!'7

"I never said he was," protested the Colonel, who, however, would not
look directly at Ebenezer. "Andrew Cooke himself hath declared to all of
us "

"We know his lying declarations," Nicholson interrupted, "and we know
as. well as you do why he called Henry here his son."

This point Colonel Robotham granted freely. "He thought his son was
dead and hoped to deceive me with an impostpr, But if Your Excellency
please, sir, my position is that a man who will disown his son dead would
as lief disown him alive, and as lief twice or thrice as once. My position,
sir, is that when he learned how his son had gambled away his property,
he conspired with Mister Lowe-or Burlingame, whiche'er it is— to defraud
us; and that when my poor son-in-law appeared with his companions and
Mister Burlingame was obliged to reveal himself, Mister Cooke callously
bribed that wretch of a servant to pose in his place, I can produce witnesses
a-plenty from the Poseidon to identify my daughter's husband as Ebenezer
Cooke and that treacherous rascal as his valet; and they will swear, as I do
now, that oft and oft on shipboard he would presume to his master's office
—a thoroughgoing poltroon^ Your Excellency!"

The Governor shook his head. "I greatly fear, George, 'tis thy son-in-law
upstairs that is the presumptuous servant Much as I deplore the scandal
oft, and pity ye the burthen of a short-heeled daughter, I am altogether
convinced that this fellow here is the true Eben Cooke. In addition to the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [769]

testimony of his father, his sister, and Mister Burlingame, I have here a
sworn affidavit from Bertrand Burton, the man in yonder chamber, that
Mister Burlingame had the foresight to acquire before the poor devil was
overhauled by fever. I shall read it aloud and hand it round for your in-
spection."

He proceeded to read a confession, over Bertrand's signature, of the
valet's several impostures of Ebenezer, his unauthorized wager with Tub-
man, and his fraudulent marriage to Lucy Robotham. Despite Ebenezer's
overwrought condition, this gesture of atonement filled his heart.

" Tis but a farther deception!" the Colonel objected. "They have twisted
a dying man's delirium to their own ends!"

"Nay, George," Nicholson said gently. "He really is a servant named
Bertrand Burton, I fear."

"Ah, marry!" Lucy moaned, and seemed ready to swoon. Mrs. Russecks
hurried to comfort her.

"But God's body!" The Colonel clenched his fists and snorted like a
nervous dray horse. "Behold my daughter, sir! Fraudulent or no, the match
hath been consummated!"

"Beyond a reasonable doubt," the Governor agreed. "Methinks no
Maryland court will dispute the match unless thy daughter sues for annul-
ment, which is her clear prerogative. But her husband is Bertrand Burton,
not Eben Cooke, and this Court here disallows her claim to any part o' this
estate, either through marriage or through this forgery of Tubman's. D'ye
have that, Burlingame?"

Henry nodded. Andrew and Richard Sowter smiled broadly at Colonel
Robotham's defeat; and Ebenezer too, though he greatly pitied both
father and daughter, felt enormously relieved that at least one of the con-
tenders was out of the field. The Governor advised the Colonel that he
was free to leave or linger, as he pleased.

"I shall leave this instant," Colonel Robotham declared with great
emotion, "lest I commit murther on that lying lecher upstairs. God forgive

him!"

Properly hospitable now that their quarrel was settled to his advantage,
Andrew offered to see the Robothams to their carriage, but the Colonel
refused the eourtesy-which in any case the Governor would not have per-
mitted—and escorted his tearful daughter from the room.

"So," said Nicholson with a sniff, "Now, may I assume we're all of a
mind as to who is Eben Cooke and who is not? Excellent. Then as for

[ yyo ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

the quarrel betwixt Mister Smith and Mister Andrew Cooke, methinks it
hangs upon three main questions: a question o' law, a question o' fact,
and another question o' law, in that order. Did Eben Cooke's power of
attorney give him leave to dispose o' this estate? If so, did he dispose of it
knowingly or in ignorance? And if in ignorance, is the conveyance none-
theless valid before the law? I ask ye now to address yourselves to the first
question, gentlemen."

Andrew took the floor first to plead that while in fact there was no
stipulation in his son's commission specifically forbidding him to dispose
of the estate, no reasonable man could question that such was the spirit of
the thing—why would he apprentice the young man to Peter Paggen to
learn the plantation trade, if he meant to dispose of his holdings in Mary-
land? But, he added, if anyone -were carping enough to challenge his intent,
he offered in evidence a transcript of his will and testament, prepared in
1693, wherein he bequeathed Cooke's Point to his children, share and share
alike. Did that suggest to the Court that he meant for his son to dispose of
the property? Andrew concluded with high indignation and a red face.
When he was finished, Roxanne nodded her belief in the justice of his
arguments and lent him her linen handkerchief to mop his brow with.

"IFt please Your Excellency/' Sowter declared in his turn, "my client
freely grants Andrew Cooke's intention; we have no doubt whatever that
the young man was not instructed to dispose of Cooke's Point. But good
St. Abdon, sir, the question hath to do with authority, not with instruction:
I submit that if young Mister Cooke's commission lawfully empowered him
to dispose of the property, the question of paternal sanction is immaterial/'

The Governor rubbed his nose and sighed. "The Court agrees/'

Sowter then obtained further concession from the Court that if in the
management of the estate Ebenezer had found it expedient to lease, sell,
or grant away some small portion of it, his action would be fully authorized
by the phrase "all matters pertinent thereto"— since, after all, the very sot-
weed for the sale of which the plantation existed was part and parcel of the
estate. And having won this point, he declared that what applied to a part
applied to the whole; to infer some arbitary limitation from the language
of the commission would be patently absurd,

"If Mister Eben had the right to sell one leaf o' sot-weed," Sowter con-
cluded, "he had the right to sell the whole estate/'

By way of rebuttal, Andrew maintained that to interpret so broadly the
phrase "all matters pertinent thereto" was in effect to contradict it, for if

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 771 ]

the attorney disposed of the whole estate, he by that gesture disposed of
his power of attorney as well.

" Which in sooth he did!" laughed Sowter. "We ne'er disputed that!"

Nicholson consulted Burlingame and Sir Thomas. "I greatly fear/7 he
then declared, "the Court must find for Mister Sowter on this first question.
Tis common practice for an overseer with power of attorney to deed away
portions of an estate to indentured servants, for example, in fulfillment of
their bonds— 'twas just such a matter, as I recall, that Mister Spurdance was
litigating with Mister Smith in the Cambridge Court. And albeit 'tis the
usual custom of attorneys to consult the owners ere they make any large
transaction, in the absence of any stipulation to the contrary the Court
must rule that Eben Cooke was lawfully empowered to dispose o' the
whole estate as he saw fit."

This was a hard blow for Andrew; Ebenezer was touched to observe more
distress than anger in the look his father gave him.

"As to the second question/* Nicholson proceeded grimly, "let me merely
enquire whether there is any difference of opinion. Tis thy contention,
is't not, Mister Cooke, that the boy granted away his legacy unwittingly to
Mister Smith?"

"Aye/* said Andrew. "Eben himself will swear to't, as will " He

hesitated* loath to pronounce Burlingame^ name. "As will the clerk o' this
Court and this unfortunate young lady here, whom my boy was coerced
by Mister Smith into marrying. Both were eyewitnesses to the grant. More-
over, Your Excellency may consult the records of the Circuit Court, session
of September last "

"I have already/' the Governor said. "Mister Burlingame was kind enough
to prepare a copy for me. Mister Sowter, is't thy intent to dispute this
question of fact, or do ye allow that the grantor was unaware or the nature
of his grant?"

"We have no mind to dispute that fact," Sowter replied. "Howbeit "

"Nay, now, spare me thy howbeits for the nonce, sir. To proceed, then:
Ebenezer Cooke was fully within his rights as Andrew Cooke's attorney to
giant away Cooke's Point to William Smith, but 'tis agreed by all parties
that he did so unaware that it was his own estate he granted. I now ask
Ebenezer Cooke to describe in full the circumstances o' the grant, and then
well have an end to the tawdiy business."

The poet released Joan's hand long enough to do as he was bid: he
reviewed as clearly as he could recall them the details of his journey to
Cambridge with Henry Burlingame; their dispute concerning the relation-

• [ 772 I THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

ship of innocence to justice; his indignation at the conduct of Judge Ham-
maker's court; his intervention in the case of Smith v. Spurdance and the
several stipulations of his verdict thereon.

"'Twas an outrage against Justice I sought innocently to rectify," he
concluded. "Howbeit, when my innocence was stripped from me I saw I
had not rectified but perpetrated injustice: not only did I grant what was
not mine to grant— I mean morally, not legally— but in so doing I ruined
a good and faithful man, Ben Spurdance; and indirectly, by giving this
house to William Smith to turn into a den of viciousness, I ruined many
another man as well, for which God forgive me."

"I see," Nicholson smiled drily. "And may the Court infer that your
estimation of innocence hath been revised somewhat in consequence?"

Though he knew there was nothing malicious in the question, Ebenezer
could not return the smile. "The Court may," he answered quietly, and
resumed his seat. Seldom had he felt more dispirited about himself than
now, when, with many of his perils behind him, he had leisure to contem-
plate the destruction wrought by his innocence. He scarcely took notice
of the fact that it was Joan who took his hand this time, though more or
less apathetically; he stole a guilty glance at his sister, whose rueful eyes said
plainly that the gesture had not escaped her.

Nicholson next requested a preliminary statement from both Andrew
Cooke and, Richard Sowter on the question of the validity of the grant.

"My contentions are three, sir," Andrew declared. "I hold in the first
place that Judge Hammaker had no authority to delegate his office to my
son, who hath no reading in the law, and thus that the sentence imposed on
Spurdance was unlawful; second, that e'en if the sentence was lawful, the
grant was not, being made unknowingly; and third, that e'en should an
innocent grant be ruled binding, the conditions of my son's were not ful-
filled. That is to say, Smith was ordered to find a husband for the girl
Susan Warren, supposedly his daughter; but I hold, sir, that her marriage
to my son is null and void, on the double grounds that he was coerced
into wedding her and that her name is not Susan Warren but Joan
Toast. The stipulations being therefore unsatisfied, the grant must be
revoked."

Impressed as he was by the persuasiveness of his father's case, Ebenezer
was greatly perturbed by this last contention. "A word, Your Excellency!"
he pleaded.

"Not now," said Nicholson, who appeared less moved by Andrew's
arguments than was the poet. "The floor is Mister SowterV

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 773 ]

Sowter then declared his intention to show first, by legal precedent, that
it was within Judge Hammaker's rights, under special circumstances, to
delegate the authority of the Bench in effect, since in fact he never
relinquished it at all: what he had done, in other words, was grant Ebenezer
the privilege of pronouncing a sentence which he then ratified and so made
lawful, but which he could as easily have overridden; it was in truth no
more than a consultation that Hammaker availed himself of, as a judge will
often consult an expert and disinterested third party before ruling on a
difficult civil suit (furthermore, he added in an aside to Andrew, it must be
allowed that Ebenezer -was a disinterested party; otherwise the grant was
made knowingly and could scarcely be challenged). In the second place, he
meant to demonstrate both by reason and by precedent what no man
familiar with torts would seriously question: that a lawful contract lawfully
signed is binding, it being the responsibility of the signatories to apprise
themselves of its terms. Moreover, it would be a mockery of justice to hold
that a breach of contract committed by Ben Spurdance is more reprehensible
than the same breach committed by Messrs. Cooke and son; if in the
Circuit Court's opinion William Smith was due the whole of Maiden (less
one and a half acres) in redress of his grievances, then surely it was no less
his due for the fact that 'Squire Cooke and not poor Spurdance happened
to own it— Spurdance too, the Court was to remember, had power of
attorney, and was thus acting in Andrew's behalf when he deprived the
cooper of his just reward. As for this feeble casuistry regarding the mar-
riage

"IF t please Your Excellency/7 Budingame interrupted at this point "I
am dry of ink/' He showed Nicolson the paper on which he had been
transcribing testimony. "See there, how I was obliged to leave Mister
Sowter's period half-writ? I beg Your Excellency's leave to forage for another
pot of ink and a better quill as well"

At first the Governor's expression was as impatient as were Sowter's and
Andrew Cooke's, but something in Burlingame's face— which Ebenezer too
remarked, but Sowter was prevented by his position from observing— led
him to examine the page of testimony.

"Ah, well, 'tis a bother, Henry, but there's no help for't— besides, I daresay
I'm not the only man here that hath been tendered a subpoena by Dame
Nature." He rapped the table-edge and stood up. "This Court stands in
recess for half an hour or thereabouts. Leave the room as ye please, but
not the house/'

2i : THE POET EARNS HIS ESTATE

AS SOON AS THE COURT WAS RECESSED RICHARD SOWTER AND WILLIAM

Smith retired to another room, whereupon Burlingame, so far from going in
search of ink, admitted cheerfully that his pot was half full, but dispatched
the militiaman to find more for appearance's sake.

* Why is't ye tricked us?" Andrew demanded. "I strenuously object!"

Burlingame shrugged. "To save Anna's dowry/' he said mischievously.
"I'd not want to lose my share of Cooke's Point"

"Nay, Henry," Anna scolded. "Go to!"

"I'll have somewhat to say to you anon, young lady," Andrew threatened.
"Just now — "

"Just now we've a crisis on our hands, sir," Governor Nicholson broke in,
"and not much time to make our plans, so prithee contain thy spleen till
another time."

"A crisis? Nonsense! You heard my arguments!"

"Aye, and I heard Sowter's rebuttal, that leaves ye not a pot to piss in.
Which vulgar trope reminds me — " He bowed to the ladies and excused
himself.

"Nay, sir," urged Burlingame. "'Tis most important you hear this too"

"Ah, ah — " Nicholson waggled an admonitory finger. "Twere most
unethical, sir: I remind ye we have declared ourselves a court o' law, and 'tis
popularly believed a judge should be impartial."

"As should a clerk," Andrew added sternly. Til win my case without thy
assistance, Mister Burlingame."

"A fart for thy case!" cried Henry. "I care no more who owns this piece of
dirt than doth Ebenezer, or thy daughter! Tis the Province I'm concerned
with."

"Eh?" The Governor paused at the door. "How's that, Henry?"
Burlingame gathered all the men around the baize table for a conference;
so sincere was his concern that even Ebenezer reluctantly left the couch,
where Joan remained still cold to his petitions for her mercy, and joined
them.

"Tis. about that portion of the Assembly Journal," Burlingame
announced. "All of us here save you, Mister Cooke, are aware of its nature

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 775 ]

and importance—I shall ask you merely to accept His Excellency's word
for't that without this document of Bill Smith's we may well lose a much
graver case than this one, and belike the entire Province o' Maryland into
the bargain! With the Journal complete we may yet not get our man, but
at least we can prosecute."

'That is correct, sir," Nicholson assured Andrew. "But what oft, Henry?"

Burlingame smiled. "We've heard Mister Cooke's case and Mister
Sowter's, sir, and you know as well as I that as they stand, Mister Cooke
hath lost every point."

Andrew protested vigorously, even violently, against this opinion, and
Nicholson reminded Burlingame of the unethicality of asking a judge to
commit himself before the pleadings were complete. But his smile suggested,
to Ebenezer at least, that Andrew's case was perhaps by no means so
strong as the poet had thought.

"Methinks I should tell you now, sir," Ebenezer said to his father, "I
have no intentions of disavowing my marriage, what e'er the circumstances

oft. Joan's wretched state is my responsibility " Here he waved away

McEvoy's protests, "Nay, John, 'tis mine, and I'd not abandon her again
for a thousand Maidens."

In vain did his father point out that she was a diseased and dying prosti-
tute; in vain he turned from wrath to reasonableness to supplication, and
returned to wrath. Ebenezer was adamant.

"Out on't, then!" his father cried at last, "Wed the whore a second time
when our case is won, and be damned t'ye! All I beg is your leave to save
Maiden for ye!"

Now Ebenezer found himself caught between conflicting responsibilities
and could see no way to reconcile them. It was a painful moment until
Burlingame came to his rescue, as he had so often in the past.

44 Tis all beside the point in any case, gentlemen," Henry said. "If Sowter
hath a brain in his thieving head— and you may wager he hath— he'll agree
that the marriage is false (if you'll pardon me, Eben, 'tis as well your father
knew the match hath ne'er been consummated). But the stipulation that
required it was false for the same reason: Joan Toast isn't Susan Warren, and
Susan Warren isn't Bill Smith's daughter, and there's an end on't! As for the
other arguments, they simply hold no water; 'twill be light work for Sowter
to rest his case on precedents. Do you agree, Tom? Thou'rt no judge, now."

Sir Thomas Lawrence admitted that Andrew's case struck him as
vulnerable and Sowter's relatively strong, but added that he thought Mister
Cooke had overlooked the best line of attack. "If I were thy counsel," he

[776] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

told Andrew, "I'd appeal the extremity of the Circuit Court's ruling, not its
legality. Admit that Spurdance was in the wrong, but plead for the damages
to be lightened— say, to the terms of Smith's original indenture plus costs
and a sop for's trouble."

Burlingame shook his head. "You don't see the problem, Tom. We don't
want Sowter to win, but we dare not let him lose!"

"And why not, pray?" demanded Nicholson.

"For the best of reasons, sir," Burlingame replied calmly. "You and I
and Sir Thomas know very well that this court hath no more law in't than a
bawdyhouse."

Ebenezer expressed his astonishment, and Andrew openly charged
Burlingame with prevarication; but Sir Thomas blushed, and Governor
Nicholson scowled uncomfortably.

"Ah, well now, Henry!" He glanced angrily about the room. "I'll own 'tis
not the sort o' thing a governor doth every Tuesday— but 'tis done, dammee!
If I choose to find for Smith I'll find for Smith, and if for Cooke then
I'll find for Cooke, arguments and precedents be damned! I doubt our friend
Sowter will appeal to the Lords Commissioners!"

"I'm sure he won't/' Henry agreed. "But when Judge Hammaker learns
that you sat yourself down in this parlor one evening and reversed the ruling
of his Circuit Court, you may rest on't he'll make a noise in London! And
wouldn't Andros love the sound oft!"

"No more!" growled Nicholson. "The point is clear enough." He would
not commit himself further, but his tone bade no good for Andrew's
prospects.

"Well, God's blood!" that gentleman exclaimed. "I'd have ye recall, sire,
that my voice is as loud as Hammaker's with the Lords Commissioners! If
this court hath no jurisdiction, ye'll .be no better off for ruling against me!"

"Quite so," Burlingame agreed with a smile, "now that I've shown ye the
way. Besides, we want the rest of the Privie Journall as well as the estate, if
not more so. Sowter knows his client's position is a shaky one— Smith's
attempt to run away shows that— but he also knows there's some connection
'twixt me and the Cookes. He's not sure of his ground, particularly with
regard to our vice and sedition charges, and methinks his only motive in
defending Smith's claim is to give his man more bargaining power when the
time comes to bargain,"

Nicholson fumed and worried his stick. "Ye might have mentioned this
ere we set up court, you know!"

"'Twere premature," Burlingame declared. "We have got rid of the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 777 ]

Colonel already, and 'twas quite within your rights to seize Cooke's Point for
the nonce— well done, in fact/'

"Thou'rt too gracious!"

"But you daren't hold the property for long on such a pretext, and you
daren't release it by court order to either party. Tis hence I warned you to
recess."

Nicholson wiped his brow. "Devil take all barristers and law-books! What
a province I could have me without 'em! What do we do now, Henry?"

Burlingame shrugged. "What do all good barristers do when they have no
case, sir? We settle out o' court!"

"Stay!" Ebenezer warned. "Here they are."

Richard Sowter and William Smith came in from the next room. The
cooper did indeed look unsure of his ground, but his counsel was as breezy
as ever.

"Did ye scare up some ink, Mister Clerk? Splendid! By St. Ludwig, 'twere
a pity such eloquence as Mister Cooke's went unrecorded!"

The party around the table dispersed guiltily. Observing with some
surprise that Anna had moved to the couch and was deep in conversation
with Joan, Ebenezer returned with his father to his earlier place. So dispirited
was Andrew by the progress of events that he offered no resistance when his
son took his arm and directed him gently to a seat.

"By'r leave, Your Excellency/' Sowter asked, "may I proceed with my
statement?"

Burlingame, Ebenezer noticed, had been conferring in whispers with the
Governor and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Now he sat back and winked at
Ebenezer as if there were nothing at all to be concerned about!

"Ye may not/' Nicholson grumbled.

Sowter's face clouded, "Your Excellency?"

"The Court will rule on thy client's claim some other time," the Governor
said. "Just now I'm fetching the twain of ye to Anne Arundel jail. The
charges are conspiracy, sedition, and high treason, and after what Tim
Mitchell here hath told me, I quite expect to see ye hanged ere the year is
out!"

The surprise brought even the sullen cooper to his feet. "Tim Mitchell!"

"Aye, gentlemen." Burlingame smiled. "Captain Billy's pride and pleasure,
till his real son came along/' His hands were busy as he spoke, and his
appearance changed magically. Off came the powdered periwig, to be
replaced by a short black hairpiece; from his mouth he removed a curious
device which, it turned out, had held three artificial teeth in position. Most

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

uncannily of all, he seemed able to alter at will the set of his facial muscles:
the curve of his cheeks and the flare of his nose changed shape before their
eyes; his habitually furrowed brow grew smooth, but crow's-feet appeared
where before there were none. Finally, his voice deepened and coarsened; he
drew in upon himself so as to seem at least two inches shorter; his eyes took
on a craftier cast— Nicholas Lowe, in a few miraculous seconds, had become
Timothy Mitchell.

" 'Sbody!" exclaimed Sir Thomas Lawrence, and the Governor himself
—though one supposed he must have witnessed such transformations of
his trusted agent before— was moved to shake his head.

"Tis a page of Ovid!" Ebenezer marveled. The others made similar
expressions of their awe— except Smith and Sowter, who were dumb struck.

"Now, Mister Smith," Burlingame said grimly, "methinks ye know what
straits thou'rt in if I testify against ye— if ye do not, I give ye leave to
consult Mister Sowter, that will keep ye company in jail for's misdemeanors."

The cooper seemed ready to do violence, but Sowter waved his hand
resignedly.

"Ye quite agree we've dagged ye? Splendid! Then attend me closely:
'tis my intention to expose for prosecution the entire traffic in opium and
whores, the which hath paid for all of John Coode's mischief and haply
Baltimore's as well. Whoe'er hath had a finger in't"— he smiled at Andrew—
"shall be brought to account, regardless of his station "

"St. Louis's wig, man!" Sowter complained. "Jail us and have done with't,
but spare us this pious gloating!"

"Patience, Dick." Henry raised his finger. " Tis but my preamble to a
bargain. On the strength of my deposition His Excellency hath instructed
Sir Thomas to proceed against Coode, Bill Mitchell, and every traitor of a
whoremaster in his company — with the possible exception of yourselves."

Smith's eyes narrowed, and Sowter's expression became calculating as
Burlingame offered to waive the charges against them in return for the
cooper's portion of the Privie Journall, on whose verso was believed to be
Coode's record of confiscations and prosecutions during his brief tenure of
office. The cooper agreed at once to the exchange, but Sowter restrained him.

"Only think of the consequences, Bill!" he warned. "D'ye think we'll
live out the month when John Coode learns ye've let go the papers? Besides,
methinks His Excellency must set great store by 'em to make us such an
offer; and What mil fetch eleven pence, don't ye know, witt as lightly fetch
a shilling . . ."

"Take 'em away, Sergeant," snapped Nicholson. "I'm sony to disappoint

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 779 ]

ye, Henry, but I'll not dicker farther with traitors just to get your
grandfather's diary."

"Stay!" Sowter cried at once. "We'll fetch ye the wretched papers! Only
give us thy pledge in writing . . ."

Nicholson shook his head. "I'm not such a fool as that/'

"Welladay! Then this much, at least, sir: we'll have no profit in our
bargain if John Coode murthers us; grant us immediate safe conduct to
Virginia, and ye may have the papers."

Again Burlingame conferred in whispers with the Governor and Sir
Thomas. Ebenezer gripped his father's shoulder.

"His Excellency advises me to authorize safe exit for ye," Henry declared,
"but not as a term of our first agreement. We'll fetch ye out o' Maryland in
the morning if Smith relinquishes all claim to this estate."

"God bless ye, sir!" Andrew cried.

* 'Sheartl" protested Sowter. "Ye'd bleed us dry!"

Nicholson grinned. "And 'twill not be Virginia we fetch ye to, either, but
Pennsylvania. Tve enemies enough in Virginia."

"What liars they are that call ye Papist!" William Smith exclaimed.
"Thou'rt not even a proper Gentile!"

Sowter sighed. "We've no choice. Bill. Fetch the papers, and I'll draw up
a conveyance,"

The rest of the company cheered the news: Anna and Ebenezer embraced
each other with great relief j Andrew apologized stiffly to Burlingame and
commended him for his strategy, as did Nicholson, Sir Thomas, and John
McEvoy; Roxanne and Henrietta looked on approvingly. Only Joan Toast
remained apathetic, and the sight of her blighted Ebenezer's joy.

The cooper left the room, under guard, and returned with a roll of yellowed
papers, which Burlingame received eagerly. He and Sir Thomas made a
cursory inspection of the verso and pronounced it sufficient evidence, when
combined with the 1691 Assembly Journal, to institute proceedings against
Coode and his associates, Then, while Sowter, Sir Thomas, and the Governor
discussed the details of releasing Maiden and ferrying the two men up the
Bay to Pennsylvania, Burlingame took Ebenezer aside.

"D'ye recall the story I told ye on our way to Plymouth?" he asked
excitedly, "How Sir Henry and Captain John were captured by Powhatan?"

Ebenezer smiled. "They struck some lewd bargain over the King's
daughter, as I recall, but we ne'er learned the outcome oft Is that the rest
of the tale?"

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"Aye, methinks our story is complete. Let's read it while Tom and the
Governor attend those rascals."

And then and there, despite the general excitement in the room, they
read together the second and final portion of Sir Henry Burlingame's
Privie Journall, which began (where the first had left off) with the author
and Captain John Smith incarcerated in the Emperor Powhatan's village
waiting for dawn, at which time the Captain was pledged to gamble their
lives against his ability to do what the ablest young men of the town had
found impossible: relieve Pocahontas of her maidenhood.

Two burlie Guards were plac'd over us, had written Sir Henry, and commis-
sion'd to provide our everie wish, and to slay u$ shd we offer to escape. My Cap-
tain then commend d to regale me with accounts, endlesse & lubricious, of divers
maidens in exotick lands, that he had deftowr'd, till that I grewe so wearie, I did
feign sleep. But watch' d him privilie, the night througft.

Neare midnigfit, believing me fast asleep, my Captain did ryse up from his bed
(like mine, a filthie pallet upon the grownd), and summon' d one of our Guards,
Thereupon ensu'd a whisper' d colloquie, yet not so hush'd withal, but I heard the
substance of it. Ever & anon he glanc'd to see, Whether I was asleep? And to all
that were naught the wiser, so I was. But I kept one eye still a-squint, and both
eares wide, and follow' d there conversation with passing ease. Smith declar'd, He
was hungrie, the w°A surpriz'd me not a little, seeing he had eate enough at the
Emperours feest, to preserve the whole of Jamestowne through the Winter. He
demanded to be brought food at once. The Salvage was loath to bestir him selfe,
so it seem'd to me, the moreso when my Captain commenced to tell what dishes
he crav'd; to witt: one egg-plant (that frute, that is caU'd by some, Aubergine)
with corne-floure wherein to cooke it, & water wherewith to drinke it downe . , .

"An egg-plantl" Burlingame murmured.

He did maintaine, that onlie thus did white men prepare the frute of the egg-
plant. Wch I knewe for a lye.

The Salvage did pleade the houre of night and the season of yeere, but upon
my Captains pressing the matter (besides bribing him with some bawble from
his wicked pockett), he at last consented to steale an egg-plant and fioure from
the common store neare the Emperours howse. Then departing, he was absent
for some while, during woh my Captain pac'd about the hutt, as might a man,
whose wife was in travaile, not forgetting to certain him selfe, now & againe, that
my sleep was sound & undisturb'd,

Whenas the Salvage did returne, with 2 drfd egg-plants & a dishful of fioure,
not to mention an earthen jugg of water, my Captain rewarded him with a second
trinkett, and ask'd him to remove him selfe from the hutt, if it pleas' d him, and
sett outside, for that white men (as he claim'd) never cook'd there food, but
privilie. The Salvage did as he was bid, eager to contemplate his treasures, and
left alone, my Captain straightway set to work upon the egg-plant, in the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 781 ]

strangest manner I ever did behold. Forsooth, I was that amaz'd, that even some
weeks thereafter, here in Jamestowne, what time I set to recording this narrative
in my Journall-booke, it was no light matter to realize it was true. For had I not
observ'd it my owne selfe, I had never believ'd it to be aught but the lewd con-
struction of some dissolute fancie. Endlesse indeed, and beyond the ken of sober
& continent men, are the practices and fowle receipts of those lustfull persons,
the votaries of the flesh, that still sett Venus & Bacchus over chast Minerva, and
studie with scholars zeal all the tricks and dark refynements of camallitie! I blush
to committ the thing to paper, even to these the privie pages of my JournalL Wc*
it is my vow, that no man shall lay eyes upon, while that I live.

"I say!" Burlingame exclaimed. "The rest of the page is gone, and part
of the nextl D'ye grasp what it is we have here, Eben?"

"You mean the matter of the Sacred Egg-plant, that the Tayac Chicamec
spoke of? Tis not impossible there's some connection . . ."

"I know there isl FChrist, what this could mean!"

They read on, Burlingame with an expression of voracious, almost painful
eagerness, and Ebenezer with the first stirrings of a strange uneasiness.

For this reason, the narrative resumed after the break, it was to my grand
chagrinn, that coming to my senses some houres later, I discovered I had assumed
in fact, that state w°h theretofore I had feign'd; to witt: a sownd & recklesse
sleep . . .

"God damn him!" Henry cried.

My repose was broken by the Salvage Guard & Keeper, and starting up, I
fownd the Sunne dreadie risen. From without our hutt there came to my eares,
the whooping & hollowing of many Salvages, and I guess'd, they were assembVd
for my Captains lustie tryall of there Princesse. My Captain, when I look'd at
him, was futtie clotWd, and no signs of the Aubergine or other things being ap-
parent, I wonder' d whether the scene I had witness1 d in the night just past, was a
mere fantastick dreemf such as men are wont to suffer, when there death is neare
to hand * , .

"Then he did witness it," Ebenezer offered, "whatever it was."
"But the page is gone!"

It is true, the Journall went on, that when we left the hutt, under the eye of
our Salvage Guards, and were led to the publick square, my Captain shew'd some
hardshipp in walking, as if loath to keep his leggs together, but this deficiencie
c* as well be attributed to feare ( w°* it is well known, can loose a mans hold upon
his reins), as to any strange behaviour of the evening past. And this former seem'd
the more likdie, for that the scene before us was aught but a consoling one.

Round about the court-yard, in a circle, stood the people of the towne,
hottowing & howling in a fearsome manner. Within the large circle thus form'd

[ 782 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

was a smaller, made up of tenne or a dozen of the Emperours Lieutenants. These
-were greate brawnie Salvages, bedeck'd in feathers and paynted most grew-
somelie, that donn'd in naught save these adornments, did leap and daunce
about, issuing feerce screames, and brandishing there Tomahawkes. In the center
of this smalle ring sat the Emperour Powhatan, rays' d above the crowd on a loftie
chaire, and before him, upon a manner of altar stone, lay Pocahontas, stript &
trust with thongs of hyde for the heethenish rites. Yet maugre the rudenesse of
her position, the Princesse seem'd not a whit alarm* d, but wore an huge smyle
upon her face. Whereat I guess9 d, that this vile manner of presenting maidens for
bethrothal must be in common use among the Salvage nations, to such extent
that, Habit being master of us all, they had got even to relish it, in there pagan
sinfullnesse. Wcl1 notwithstanding, I was fill'd with trepidation, the more for that,
marking the considerable manlinesse of those Salvages, that sprang about att
nakedlie, and recalling the modest endowment of my Captain (that for all his
boasting, I had seen privilie to be but passing well equipt for Venereal exercise),
I sawe no hope of his making good where they had faiVd. Forsooth, had I been
in his place, I SM not have been able to summon the most tryfting manlinesse, for
knowing those evill Tomahawkes stood readie to breake my head at the first sign
of deficiencie.

Directly they spy'd us, all the Salvages redoubled there commotion. The folk in
the greate circle showted and clapt hands, the Lieutenant-Salvages leapt and
hopt, even Pocahontas contriv'd to joggle about on her pedestatt. Wch move-
ments, considering the manner wherein she was trust and tether' d7 shewed un-
common suppleness of limb, and readiness for whatever might ensue.

We were fetch 'd into the small circle and stationed before the altar of Venus
(to look whereon brought the blush to. my cheeks), whereupon the Salvages lafd
hands upon my Captain, and with one jerk brought his breeches low. From where
I stood, woyt chanc'd to be behind him, the sight was unprepossessing enough, but
the Salvages before all suddenlie put by there clamour. The Emperour shaded
his eyes from the morning Sunne, the better to behold him, and Pocahontas,
maugre her bonds (wch netted her as fast as those, that Vulcan fashion9 d for his
faithless spouse), this Pocahontas, I say, came neare to breaking her necke with
looking, and the unchast smyle, that erst had play'd about her mowth, now van-
ish'd altogether.

My Captain then turning half around to see, Whether I was at hand? I at last
beheld the cause of all this wonder, and as well the effect of all his magick of the
night past — the w°h to relate, must fetch me beyond all bownds of taste & de-
cencie, but to withhold, must betray the Truth and leave what followed veiVd in
mystery. To have done then, my Captains yard stood full erect, and what er$t had
been more cause for pity than for astonishment, was now in verie sooth a fright-
full engine: such was the virtue of his devilish brewe, that when now his codd
stood readie for the carnall tilt, he rear'd his bulk not an inch below eleven, and
well-nigh three in diameter — a weapon of the Gods! Add to w°h, it was all a fyrie
hue, gave o/f a scent of clove & vanilla, and appeared as stout 'as that stone
whereon its victim lay. A mightie sownd went up from the populace; the Lieu-
tenants, that had doubtlesse been the Princesses former suitors, dropt to there

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 783 ]

knees as in prayer; the Emperour started up in his high seate, dismay1 d by the
fate about to befall his daughter; and as for that same Pocahontas, she did
swoone dead away.

Straight leapt my Captain to his work, whereof I can bring myself to scry
naught save this: Mercifull, mercifull, the Providence, that kept the heethen
maid aswoont while that my Captain did what none had done before! And so in-
ordinatelie withal, that anon the Emperour beggrd for an end to the tryall, lest
his daughter depart from this life. He declared my Captain victorious, rescinded
the decree of death hanging over us, dispersed the companie, and had Pocahontas
removed to his howse, -where for three days thereafter she hung in the balance
twixt life & death. A banquet was then prepard for us, whereat Powhatan
expressed his intent to marrie his daughter to my Captain, inasmuch as no Salvage
in his trybe e* match his ririlitie* My Captain declyn'd, whereupon the Emperour
-wax'd wroth, and w* have returned us to our hutt, had not my Captain offered to
instruct him in that mysterie, whereby he had so increased him selfe. This more
than satisfy" d the Emperour, that SM have been long past such vanitie, and it was
on the best of terms, that we $et out at last for Jamestowne. With a troup of
Salvages to assist us by the way.

Throughout the journie, as one might guess, my Captain bragg'd and strutted
handsomelie. 1 was oblig'd to him for life, he declafd, for that his deed had pre-
serv'd the twain of u$; and he offer* d to murther me, in some dark and dastard
wise, if ever I noys'd about in Jamestowne the manner of our salvation. I c* scarce
protest* inasmuch he had in sooth preserv'd me, but it was bitter frute to eate, for
that I must suhmitt to his browbeating and braggadocio without compleynt. In
brief e, I was to feign I had been detained with Opecancanough, and my Captain
alone led in unto the Emperour. Moreover, he made so bold as to shew me a writ-
ten account of his sdvatipn by Pocahontas, the w°ft he meant to include in his
lying Historic; this version made no mention whatever of his scurrilous deftowr-
ing of the Princem, but merelie implyfdf she was overcome by his manlie bearing
& comelie fate! It was this farce and travestie, then, wherein I was obligd to
feign belief, and w** hath mov'd me, in hopes of pacifying my anguish'd con-
science, to committ this true accounting to my Journall-booke. Whereon, I pray
God, my Captain will never lay his lecherous eyes!

Here ended Sir Henry's Privie Journall except for one final entry, dated
several weeks after his return to Jamestown and only a few months prior
to his conscription for the fateful voyage up the Chesapeake:

March, 1608: Pocahontas, the Emperours daughter, having at long last re-
gayrfd full possession of her health, is ever at the gates of the towne, with a re-
tinue of her people* enquiring after my Captain. He shuns her as much a$ possi-
ble, dbeit in her absence, and in his Historic, he makes the finest speaches in her
praise. The truth is, he feares his fowle adventure will outf and I suspect he is. torn
betwixt his reluctance to wed her (and thus make an honest woman of her), and
his desire once againe to $4te his lust on her. For albeit the verie sownd of his
voice doth sicken my stomdcke, so do I loathe him, yet he cannot contain his

[784] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

lewd exployt, but must still catch privilie my eare, and declare that hers ivczs the
most succulent ftowr ever he pluckt, & cet., & cet.

As for the Princesse, she still lingers at the gate, dl wystfullie, and sends him,
by her attendants, woven basketts of great dry' d egg-plants. . .

"God's body!" Burlingame cried at the end. "Your Excellency, look

here!"

Nicholson smiled from the green table, where he was completing the
transaction with Sowter. "New matter against Coode, is't?"

"Coodebe damned!" Burlingame replied. "Here, read it, sir! Tis all about
the mysterious egg-plant business I spoke of before! T God, if only the recipe
were there as well! Tis some encaustic, or aphrodisiac, don't ye think, Eben?
That 'fyrie red hue7 sounds very like phlogosis ... But many, what is the
trick? I could save this miserable Province with it!"

"Go to, ye lose me!" Nicholson protested, as mystified as everyone else ex-
cept Ebenezer; but when the contents of the Journall and their significance
were explained to him, his face grew quite grave. " 'Twere a risky adventure
even so," he declared, referring to Burlingame's proposed embassy to
Bloodsworth Island, "but with this egg-plant trick to confound 'em . . ."

"I could do it!" Burlingame insisted. "I'd be King of the Ahatchwhoops
by the week's end if I had that recipe! Smith!" He turned upon the
wondering cooper. "Where's the missing part of these papers? I swear you'll
not leave the Province till we have it!"

To Ebenezer's surprise, before the cooper could protest his bewilderment,
Joan Toast spoke up for the first time.

44 'Tis vain to threaten him," she said. "He hath no idea what you want,
or where to find it. I stole those pages, and I mean to keep them."

Burlingame, Nicholson, and Sir Thomas all pleaded with her to surrender
the missing passages, or at least to disclose the trick which Captain John
Smith had employed to win the day in Virginia; they explained the gravity
of the situation on Bloodsworth Island and Henry's strategy to forestall
an insurrection— but to no avail.

"Look at me!" the girl cried bitterly. "Behold the fruits of lustfulness!
Swived in my twelfth year, poxed in my twentieth, and dead in my twenty-
first! Ravaged, ruined, raped, and betrayed! Woman's lot is wretched enough
at best; d'ye think I'll pass on that murtherous receipt to make it worse?"

In vain then did Burlingame vow never to employ Smith's formula for
carnal purposes, but only to demonstrate his identity to the Ahatchwhoops.

"The Devil -was sick, the Devil a monk -would be" Joan retorted. "The

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 785 ]

time will come when ye crave a child by Anna yonder, or some other ... I
shan't e'en make the vile stuff for ye myself!"

"Then it is some potion he takes!" cried Henry. "Or is't a sort of plaster?"

Nicholson pounded his stick on the floor. "We must know, girll Name
thy price for't!"

Joan laughed. "D'ye think to bribe the dead? Nay, sir, the Great Tom
Leech bites sore enough, God knows; I'll not give him more teeth than he

hath already! But stay " Her manner suddenly became shrewd, like

Sowter's. "I may name my price, ye say?"

"Within reason, of course," the Governor affirmed. "What ye ask must be
ours to give."

"Very well, then," Joan declared. "My price is Maiden."

"Nay!" Andrew cried.

"Nay, prithee!" pleaded Ebenezer, who until then had found the
discussion as embarrassing as had Anna.

" Tis a hard price," Burlingame observed, regarding her curiously.

"Not for doing so great a disservice to my sex," Joan replied.

Now even McEvoy was moved to join the chorus of objections. " Whate'er
will ye do with this estate, my dear?" he asked gently. " Tis of no use to ye
now. If there is someone ye wish to provide for, why, peradventure the
Governor can make arrangements."

Joan turned her face to him, and her expression softened, if her resolution
did not. "Ye know as well as I there's no one, John. Why d'ye ask? Can it
be ye've forgot the whoremonger's first principle?" For the benefit of the
others she repeated it: "Ye may ask a whore her price, but not her reasons.
My price is the title to Cooke's Point, forever and aye: ye may take it or leave
it"

Nicholson and Burlingame exchanged glances.

"Done," said the Governor. "Draw up the papers, Tom."

"Nay, b'm' faith!" cried Andrew. "Tis unlawful! When Smith gave o'er
his claim, the title reverted to me!"

"Not at all," said Burlingame. "It reverted to the Province."

"Damn ye, man! Whose side are ye on?"

"On the side of the Province, for the nonce," Henry answered. "Those
pages are worth a brace of Maidens."

Andrew threatened to appeal to the Lords Commissioners, but the
Governor was not to be intimidated.

"I've seldom stood on firmer ground than this," he declared. "When I

[ y86 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

move to save the Province ye may appeal to the King himself, for aught ye'll
gain by't, and Godspeed. Where are the papers, Mrs. Cooke?"

Not until he heard the unfamiliar mode of address did Ebenezer have
the least hint of Joan's motives. Now suddenly, though a hint was all he
had, his backbone tingled; his heart glowed.

"Where are thine?" she demanded in reply, nor would she stir until
Sir Thomas had conveyed the title to Cooke's Point into her possession.
Then she calmly reached into her bodice and withdrew a tightly folded
paper which, when she handed it to Burlingame for unfolding, proved to be
three missing pages of the Journal!.

" 'Sheart, Eben, look here!" Henry cried. "May he look, Joan?"

" 'Tis not mine to forbid," the girl said glumly, and seemed to relapse
into her former apathy.

First, read the missing fragment, he pour'd a deale of -water into the dish of
ftoure, and worked the mess to a thick paste -with his fingers. Then he set the re-
mainder of the water, in its vessell, next the smalle fyre, w°h the Salvage had been
Christian enough to make us, against the cold. Whenas he sawe this water com-
mence to steem and bubble, then drewe he from his pockett (iv°* forsooth must
needs have been a spacious onel), divers ingredients, and added them to the paste.
Of these I cd name but few, forasmuch as I durst not discover to my Captain that
my sleep was feign' d; but I did learn later from his boasting that it was a receipt
much priz'd for a certain purpose (whereof I was as yet innocent) by the blacka-
moors of Africka, from whom he had learnt it. To witt: a quantitie of Tightening
Wood (w°* is to say, the bark of that tree, Nux vomica, wherefrom is got the
brucine and strychnyne of apothecaries), 2 or 3 small dry'd pimyentoes (that the
blackamoors call Zozos), a dozen peppercorns, and as many whole cloves, with i
or 2 beanes of vanilla to give it fragrance. At the same time he boyl'd a second
decoction of water mix*d with some dropps of oyl of mallow, to what end I c? not
guesse. These severall herbs and spyces, I $hd add, he still carr'd on his person, not
alone for their present employment, but as well to season his food, w*h in his
yeeres of fighting the Moors he had learnt to savour hott; and for this cause he did
prevaile upon the masters of vessells, to fetch him such spyces from there ports of
call in the Indies.

When that the paste was done, and the water fast dboyl in both vesseUs, my
Captain busy'd him selfe with cutting the egg-plant, a. dry'd one from the Sal-
vage store, and this in a singular wise. For it is the wont of men to lay hold of an
Aubergine and slyce across the topp, to the end of making thinne rownd sec-
tions. But my Captain, drawing his knife from his waiste, did sever the frute into
halves, splitting it lengthwise from top to bottom. Next he scofd out a deep hol-
low ditch in either moietie, in such wise, but when the two halves were joyrfd,
like halves of an iron-mould, the effect was of deep cylindrick cavitie in the cen-
ter, perhaps 3 inches in dyameter, and 7 or 8 in profunditie, for that it was an un-

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ -787 ]

common large egg-plant. All this I did observe with mounting curiositie, yet
careful not to discover my pretence of sleep.

The strange brewes having cook'd a certain time, my Captain then remov'd
them from the fyre. The first, that had in it all the spyces, he stirr'd and kneaded
into the paste, till the whole took on the semblance of a plaister. lie next disrob'd
him selfe, and before my wondering eyes layrd hands upon his member, drawing
back that part, that the Children of Israel are wont to offer to Jehovah, and ex-
posing the carnall glans. His codd thus bar'd (woh poets have liken* d to that Ser-
pent, that did tempt Mother Eve in the Garden), he apply' d thereto the plaister,
and lay'd it within the two hdves of the egg-plant. There it lingered some
minutes, notwithstanding the ordeall must needs have been painfull, for all the
spyce & hott things in the receipt His face did wrythe & twist, as though it
were straight into the fyre he had thrust his yard, and whenas he at last remov'd
the Aubergine, and wash'd away the plaister with his oyl-of-mallow brewe, I cd
observe with ease that his part was burnt in sooth! Moreover, he did seem loath
to touch it for feare of the payne thereby occasion' d.

Now albeit this spectacle was far from edifying, to a man of good conscience
& morall virtue, I yet must own, I took greate interest in it, both by reason of
naturall curiositie, as well as to gage for my selfe the depths of my Captains
depravitie. For it is still pleasing, to a Christian man, to suffer him selfe the studie
of wickednesse, that he may content him selfe (without sinfull pride) upon the
contrast thereof with his owne rectitude. To say naught of that truth, whereto
Augustine and other Fathers beare witnesses that true virtue lieth not in inno-
cence, but in full knowledge of the Devils subtile arts . . .

Thus ended the fragment, having brought Sir Henry to his unintended
sleep and rude awakening.

"I can do'tl" Burlingame murmured. " Tis all I need!"

Ebenezer looked away, revolted not only by the narrative but by other,
more immediate images. He observed that Anna too, though she had not
read the Journall, was quite aware of its significance: her eyes were lowered;
her cheeks aflame*

"Well, now,*' declared the Governor, rising from his place. "I think
our business here is done, Tom, Fetch those rascals aboard my ship in the
morning and see they're ferried to Pennsylvania."

The others stirred as well— outraged, disappointed, or merely perplexed
by the outcome of the evening.

"La, Master Laureate!" Sowter jeered from across the room. "The party's
done, and thou'rt still as penceless as St. Giles!"

Andrew cursed, and Nicholson frowned uncomfortably,

"Thou'rt mistaken, Dick Sowter," Joan said from the couch.

Everyone turned to her at once.

[788] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"I've little time to live/' she declared, "and a wife's estate passes to her
husband when she dies."
Andrew gasped. "I'cod! D'ye hear that, Eben?"

All except Sowter and Smith rejoiced at this disclosure of her motive.
Ebenezer rushed to embrace her, and Andrew wept for joy.
"Splendid girl! She is a very saint, Roxanne!"

But Joan turned away her face. "There remains but a single danger, that
I can see/' she said. "As hath been observed already today, a false marriage
such as ours may be disallowed, and my bequests thus contested in the
courts— inasmuch as it hath yet to be consummated."
The company fell silent; the twins drew back aghast.
"Dear Heav'n!" Roxanne whispered, and clutched at Andrew's arm.
Burlingame's expression was fascinated.

The cooper laughed harshly. "Oh, my word! Ah! Ah! D'ye hear the wench,
Sowter? She is the very Whore o' Babylon, and Cooke must swive her for's
estate! Oh, ha! I'd not touch her with a sot-weed stick!"

"My boy " Andrew spoke with difficulty to his son. "She hath— the

social malady, don't ye know— and albeit I love Maiden as I love my life, I'd

ne'er think ill o' ye "

"Stay," interrupted Burlingame. "Ye'll take her pox, Eben, but ye'H not
die oft, methinks: belike 7tis a mere dev'lish clap and not the French disease.

Marry, lad, inasmuch as Maiden hangs in the balance "

Ebenezer shook his head. " Tis of no importance, Henry. Whatever she
hath, she hath on my account, by reason of our ill-starred love. I little care
now for my legacy, save that I must earn it. 'Tis atonement I crave:
redemption for my sins against the girl, against my father, against Anna,

e'en against you, Henry "

"What sins?" protested Anna, coming to his side. "Of all men on the
planet, Eben, thou'rt freest from sin! What else drew Joan half round the
globe, do you think, through all those horrors, if not that quality in you
that hath ruined me for other men and driven e'en Henry to near distraction

" She blushed, realizing she had spoken too much. "Thou'rt the very

spirit of Innocence," she finished quietly.

"That is the crime I stand indicted for/7 her brother replied: "the crime
of innocence, whereof the Knowledged must bear the burthen. There's the
true Original Sin our souls are born in: not that Adam learned, but that
he had to learn— in short, that he was innocent."

He sat on the edge of the couch and took Joan's hand. "Once before, this
girl had shriven me of that sin, and I compounded it by deserting her.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [789]

Whatever the outcome, I rejoice at this second chance for absolution."

"Marry!" McEvoy said. "Ye mean to do't?"

"Aye."

Anna threw her arms about his neck and wept. "How I love you! The
four of us will live here, and if Henry doth not stay on Bloodsworth Island
" Her voice failed; Burlingame drew her back gently from the couch.

Ebenezer kissed Joan's hand until at last she turned her haggard eyes to
him.

"Thou'rt weary, Joan."

She closed her eyes. "Beyond imagining."

He stood up, still holding her hand, "I've not strength enough yet to
carry you to our chamber * . ," He looked about awkwardly, his features
dancing. All the women were in tears; the men either shook their heads, like
McEvoy and the Governor, or winced, like Andrew, or merely frowned a
grudging awe, like Smith and Sowter.

"I claim the honor!" Burlingame cried, and the spell was broken. Everyone
stirred himself to cover the general embarrassment: Andrew and John
McEvoy busied themselves comforting their women; Sir Thomas and the
Governor assembled their papers and called for tobacco; Smith and Sowter,
accompanied by the sergeant-at-arms, left the room.

Burlingame lifted Joan in his arms. "Good night all!" he called merrily.
"Tell cook well want a wedding breakfast in the morning, Andrew!" As he
headed for the hallway he added with a laugh, "See to what lengths the
fallen go, to increase their number! Come along, Anna; this errand wants
a chaperon."

Blushing, Anna took Ebenezer's arm, and the twins followed their
chuckling tutor up the stairs.

"Ah, well now!" their father's voice cried from the parlor. "We've a deal
to drink to, lords and ladies!" And addressing the unseen servant in the
kitchen he called "Grace? Grace! 'Sblood, Grace, fetch us a rundletl"

PART IV: THE AUTHOR APOLOGIZES

TO HIS READERS;
THE LAUREATE COMPOSES

HIS EPITAPH

Lest it be objected by a certain stodgy variety of squint-minded anti-
quarians that he has in this lengthy history played more fast and loose with
Clio, the chronicler's muse, than ever Captain John Smith dared, the Au-
thor here posits in advance, by way of surety, three blue-chip replies arranged
in order of decreasing relevancy. In the first place be it remembered, as
Burlingame himself observed, that we all invent our pasts, more or less, as
we go along, at the dictates of Whim and Interest; the happenings of former
times are a clay in the present moment that will-we, nill-we, the lot of us
must sculpt. Thus Being does make Positivists of us all. Moreover, this
Clio was already a scarred and crafty trollop when the Author found her;
it wants a nice-honed casuist, with her sort, to separate seducer from
seduced. But if, despite all, he is convicted at the Public Bar of having
forced what slender virtue the strumpet may make claim to, then the Author
joins with pleasure the most engaging company imaginable, his fellow
fornicators, whose ranks include the noblest in poetry, prose, and politics;
condemnation at such a bar, in short, on such a charge, does honor to
artist and artifact alike, of the same order of magnitude as election by the
Vatican to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or suppression by the Watch
and Ward.

Thus much for the rival claims of Fact and Fancy, which the artist, like
Governor Nicholson, may override with fair impunity. However, when the
litigants' claims are formal, rather than substantial, they pose a dilemma from
which few tale-tellers escape without a goring. Such is the Author's present
plight, as he who reads may judge.

The story of Ebenezer Cooke is told; Drama wants no more than his
consent to Joan Toast's terms, their sundry implications being clear. All the
rest is anticlimax: the same stairs that take him up to the bridal-chamber
take him down the steep incline of denouement. To the history, on the
other hand, there is so much more-all grounded on meager fact and

[ 794 1 THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

solid fancy— that the Author must risk those rude cornadas to resume it and
trust that the Reader is interested enough in the fate of the twins, their
tutor, Bertrand Burton, Slye and Scurry, and the rest, to indulge some
pandering to Curiosity at Form's expense , . .

Andrew Cooke's conviction (which he voiced innumerable times in the
course of that night's rundlet and next morning's wedding breadfast) that
the sun had set on their troubles forever and would rise thenceforth not only
on a happy and prosperous family, but on a happier and nobler Province as
well, was— alas!— by no means entirely borne out by history. Indeed, with
the possible exception of William Smith the cooper and Captain Mitchell
the opium merchant— both of whom disappeared from Clio's stage not long
afterwards, never to be heard from to this day— it cannot be said that the
life of any of our characters was markedly blissful; some, to be sure, were
rather more serene, but others took more or less serious turns for the worse,
and a few were terminated far before their time.

Tom Tayloe, for example, the corpulent dealer in indentured servants,
was released from his own servitude at Maiden immediately upon promising
to press no charges against McEvoy; one hoped his experience would lead
him into a less unsavory trade, but within the week he was peddling
redemptioners again all over Talbot County, and a few years later he was
throttled to death on Tilghman's Island by one of his investments— a giant
Scot with all of McEvoy's passion for liberty and none of his resourcefulness.
No more fortunate was Benjamin Spurdance, "the man who had naught to
lose": Andrew discovered him in the jail in Annapolis, serving a sentence
for petty thievery, and restored him to his former position as overseer of the
tobacco-fields on Cooke's Point, but vagrancy and despair had so debilitated
him that, the very next winter, an ague robbed him forever of the only
thing he had not previously lost.

It may be said of Colonel Robotham, who succumbed to a like infirmity in
April of 1698, that Life owed him no more years; but who will not regret
that his journey ended, not in disgrace— which, when complete, can be
as refreshing as success— but in embarrassment? A collaborator in the
revolution of '89 and a Councilman under both royal governors of Mary-
land, he and four similarly flexible statesmen fled cravenly to England in
1696, when Nicholson opened his prosecution of their former leader. To
add to his humiliation, Lucy never found a husband. Her child, a girl, was
born as it had been conceived, out of wedlock, and raised on the Colonel's
estate by his widow. Lucy herself fell farther and farther from respectability:

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 79$ ]

abandoning her child, she lived openly in Port Tobacco as the mistress of
her seducer, the Reverend Mr. Tubman, until that gentleman and his
colleague, the Reverend Peregrine Cony, were suspended by their bishop in
1698 on charges of drunkenness, gambling, and bigamy; of her life thereafter
nothing positive is known, but one is distressed to hear of a young prostitute
in Russecks's Tavern (which Mary Mungummory purchased from
Roxanne's estate and operated jointly with Harvey Russecks) who achieved
some fame among the lower-Dorset trappers by reason of "a Beare upon
her &umm"~- could it have been a freckled Ursa Major?

At least the Colonel was spared the chore of arranging a second annulment
for his daughter, inasmuch as she became a widow before she was a mother.
Poor Bertrand* after that final lucid hour with Ebenezer, lapsed first into
prolonged delirium, in the course of which he accepted the worship of
"Good Saint Drakepecker," held forth as Poet Laureate of Brandan's Isle,
and deflowered harems of Betsy Birdsalls and Lucy Robothams; then he
sank into a coma, from which Burlingame and a physician strove in vain
to rouse him, and three days later died in his bed at Maiden. Ebenezer
was greatly saddened by his death, not only because he felt some measure of
responsibility for it, but also because the ordeals they had survived together
had given him a genuine affection for his "adviser"; yet just as scarlet fever
may cure a man of the vapors, so his distress at losing Bertrand was eclipsed
by the far more grievous loss that followed on its heels: Joan Toast, as
everyone expected, succumbed before the year was out— on the second
night in November 1695, to be exact— but it was neither her opium nor
her pox that carried her off. Without them, to be sure, she would have
survived; they felled and disarmed her; but the coup de grdce—ty one of
those monstrous ironies that earlier had moved Ebenezer to call Life a
shameless playwright— was administered by childbirth! Hear the story:

After that evening which regained Cook's Point for Ebenezer (and ended
our plot) there was a general exodus from Maiden. Governor Nicholson,
Sir Thomas Lawrence, William Smith, and Richard Sowter sailed for Anne
Arundel Town the next day, and the militiamen went their separate ways;
Burlingame tarried until he could do no more for Bertrand and then struck
out alone on his perilous embassy to Bloodsworth Island, promising to
return in the spring and marry Anna— to which match her father had
consented, John McEvoy and Henrietta, on whom Andrew also bestowed
his blessing, were married soon after in the parlor at Maiden (to the tearful
joy of the Parisienne in the kitchen) and sailed for England as soon as
Sir Harry's will was probated; moreover, contrary to the general expectation,

[796] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Roxanne went with them, whether because her old love for Andrew had
not got the better of her grievance, or because she deemed herself too old
for further involvements or too scarred by her life with the brutish miller,
or for some other, less evident reason. Andrew followed them, leaving
Maiden to the care of his son and Ben Spurdance, and it pleased the twins
to conjecture that Roxanne meant to marry their father after all, but not
before repaying him in his own coin. However, if Andrew entertained hopes
of winning her by siege, as it were, they were never realized: on the income
from her estate she toured Europe with her daughter and son-in-law. McEvoy
went through the motions of studying music with Lotti in Venice, but
apparently lost interest in composition; he and Henrietta lived a childless,
leisurely life until September of 1715, when they and Roxanne, along with
fifty other souls, set out from Piraeus in the ship DizZdoon, bound for Cadiz,
and were never heard from again.

By spring, then, everyone had left except the twins and Joan Toast, and

life at Maiden settled into a tranquil routine. Ebenezer did indeed contract

his wife's malady, which, though virtually incurable, he contrived to hold

in check by means of certain herbs and other pharmaceuticals provided

him earlier by Burlingame (who, the Reader will not be surprised to hear,

seemed as familiar with medicine and even chirurgery as with so many other

arcane matters), so that for the time at least he suffered only a mild

discomfort; and after the first two weeks Joan's health grew too delicate to

permit further physical relations with her husband. The three devoted most

of their time to reading, music, and other gentle pursuits. The twins were

as close as they had ever been at St. Giles, with the difference that their

bond was inarticulate: those dark, unorthodox aspects of their affection

which had so alarmed them in the recent past were ignored as if they had

never existed; indeed, the simple spectator of their current life might well

have inferred that the whole thing was but a creation of Burlingame's

fancy, but a more sophisticated observer— or cynical, if you will— would raise

an eyebrow at the relish with which Ebenezer confessed his earlier doubts of

Henry's good will, and the zeal with which he now declared that Burlingame

was "more than a friend; more e'en than a brother-in-law-to-be: he is my

brother, Anna— aye, and hath been from the first!" And would this same

cynic not smile at Anna's timid devotion to the invalid Joan, whom every

morning she helped to wash and dress?

The equinox passed. In April, true to his word, Burlingame appeared at
Ma' den, for all the world an Ahatch whoop in dress. and coiffure, and
announced that, thanks to the spectacular effect of the Magic Aubergine

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

(for which, owing to the season, he had substituted an Indian gourd), his
expedition had achieved a large measure of success; he was positively
enamored, of his new-found family and much impressed by Quassapelagh and
the able Drepacca— whose relations, he added, had deteriorated gratifyingly.
He felt confident that he could get the better of them, but of his brother he
was not so sure: Cohunkowprets, thirsty for blood, had the advantage of
copper-colored skin, and the problem of deposing him was complicated by
Burlingame's great love for him. His work there, Henry concluded, was not
done; he had planted the seeds of faction, but after marrying Anna he would
be obliged to return to the Island for the summer, to cultivate them properly.

His appearance disrupted the placid tenor of life at Maiden. Anna had
grown increasingly nervous with the coming spring, and now she seemed
positively on the verge of hysteria: she could not sit still or permit a
moment's lull in conversation; her moods were as various as the faces of the
Chesapeake, and changed more frequently and less predictably; a risqu6
remark— such as Ebenezer's, that he had seen dried Indian gourds in
Spurdance's cabin on the property— was enough to send her weeping from
the room, but on occasion she would tease her brother most unkindly about
his infection and speculate, with deplorable bad taste, what effect the
eggplant-plaster might have on it. Burlingame observed her behavior with
great interest.

"You do want to wed me, Anna?" he asked at last

"Of course!" she insisted. "But I'll own I'd rather wait till the fall, when
thou'rt done with the Salvages for ever and aye * . . "

Henry smiled at Ebenezer. "As you wish, my love. Then methinks 111
leave tomorrow— The sooner departed, the sooner returned, as they say."

To what happened in the interval between this conversation, which took
place at breakfast, and Burlingame's departure twenty-four hours later,
Ebenezer could scarcely have been oblivious: the very resoluteness with
which he banished the thought from his mind (only to have it recur more
vividly each time) argues his awareness of the possibility; his sudden need
to help Spurdance oversee the afternoon's planting argues his approval of
the prospect; and his inability to sleep that night, even with cotton in his
ears and the pillow over his head, argues his suspicion of the fact. Anna
kept to her room next morning, and the poet was obliged to bid his friend
good-bye for the two of them.

"The fall seems terribly distant/' he observed at the last.

Henry smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Not to the fallen," he replied,

[ 798 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

"only to the saved. Adieu, my friend: methinks that prophecy of Pope
Clement's will come to pass."

These were his final words to the poet, not only for the day and season,
but forever. Later that day Anna declared her fear that Burlingame would
remain with the Ahatchwhoops all his life, never returning to marry her; and
much later— in 1724— she confessed that she had sent him away herself in
order to be, literally and exclusively, her brother's keeper. In any event, unless
a certain fancy of Ebenezer's later years was actually the truth, they never
saw or heard from their friend again. Whether owing to his efforts or not,
the great insurrection did not materialize, though by 1696 it seemed so
imminent that Nicholson raised the penalties for sedition almost monthly:
even the loyal Piscataways, who had fed the very first settlers in 1634, were so
inflamed— some said by Governor Andros of Virginia— that they abandoned
their towns in southern Maryland and removed to the western mountains
with their emperor (Ochotomaquath) and either starved, they being fanners
rather than hunters, or were assimilated into northern groups. The great
Five Nations, thanks to the efforts of Monsieur Casteene, General Fronte-
nac, and perhaps Drepacca as well, were wooed away entirely from the Eng-
lish to the French, and the massacres of Schenectady and Albany would al-
most surely have been multiplied throughout the English provinces had the
grand conspirators on Bloodsworth Island not been divided. The fact that
Nicholson never mustered a force to attack the Island itself suggests both
communication with and great faith in Henry Burlingame; by the end of
the century the place was an uninhabited marsh, as it is today. One supposes
that the Ahatchwhoops, under whatever leadership, migrated northward
into Pennsylvania like the Nanticokes, and were in time subsumed into the
Five Nations. On the ultimate fate of Quassapelagh, Drepacca, Co-
hunkowprets, and Burlingame, History is silent.

But though the twins' extraordinary friend departed, life at Maiden never
regained its former serenity. Anna remained in a highly nervous state, for
one thing; then in May it became apparent that during their brief cohabita-
tion three months previously, Joan Toast had been impregnated by her
husband. Here was a grave matter indeed, for if she carried the fetus to term,
the labor of bearing it would surely kill her, and in any event the child would
be born diseased; thus despite his sudden passionate desire for fatherhood,
which he felt with an intensity that frightened him, Ebenezer was obliged
to pray for a spontaneous early abortion. But not only were his prayers
unanswered: as if in punishment for his having made them, Anna confessed

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 799 1

in midsummer that she too was in a family way, and it took all the resources
of the poet's rhetoric to dissuade her from ending her life!

"I— I'm a fallen womanl" she would lament, fascinated by the term.
"Wholly disgraced!"

"Wholly," Ebenezer would agree: "as I have been since ever I came to
Maryland! You must wed thy shame to mine or see me follow you to the
grave!"

So it was that Anna remained at Maiden, in relative seclusion, while
among the servants and neighboring planters the most scandalous stories
ran rife. Once Ebenezer returned ashen-faced from Cambridge and
declared: "They're saying 'twas I that got the twain of you with child!"

"What did you expect?" Anna replied, not in the least surprised. "They
know naught of Henry, and 'tis unlikely I'd take Mister Spurdance for my
lover."

"But why me?" Ebenezer cried. "Are people so evil-minded by nature?
Or is't God's punishment to shame us as if we did in sooth what "

Anna smiled grimly at his discomposure. "What ever and aye we've
blushed to dream of? Haply it is, Eben; but if so, His sentence hath many
a precedent. *Tis the universal doubt of salvages and peasants, whether twins
of different sexes have not sinned together in the womb; is't likely they'd
think us guiltless now?"

But there is, it would appear, no shame so monstrous that one cannot
learn to live with it in time: no visitors called at Maiden, and Ebenezer's
relations with his domestic staff and field hands grew cold and formal, but
neither he nor Anna spoke again of suicide, even when it began to be
clear that Burlingame was not going to return. In November Joan Toast
died, and her infant daughter as well, from a breech-birth that would have
carried off a much stronger woman; grief-stricken, Ebenezer buried the two
of them down by the shore, beside his mother. The following January was
Anna's term: her brief labor commenced late at night, and in the absence
of professional assistance she was delivered of a healthy male child by Grace,
the Parisian cook (who had some experience of midwifery) and the poet
himself. There being little likelihood that Andrew Cooke would ever return
to Maryland or hear the scandal from a third party, Ebenezer thought it
best not to cloud his father's old age with the truth: instead, he wrote that
although Joan had expired in childbirth, their baby— a son christened
Andrew Ill—had lived, and was being cared for by Anna. The old man,
needless to say, was overjoyed.

This fiction, once established, had a marked effect on Ebenezer and his

[ 800 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

sister. Despite her shame, Anna seemed eminently suited in body and mind
for motherhood: she had bloomed during pregnancy; her delivery had been
easy; now her breasts were rich with milk, and lament as she might, she
feasted upon her child as did he upon her, and grew as plump and ruddy
from the nursing. They did in fact name the child Andrew, and began to
consider removing from Maiden altogether as soon as feasible, "for the boy's
sake ..."

But this brings us near the end of the history, and it will be necessary
to digress for a moment before reaching it if we are to learn the fate of that
arch-mischiefmaker John Coode, of the saucy Governor who prosecuted
him, and of Lord Baltimore's grand crusade to recover his charter to
Maryland, which had been confiscated by King William.

Of Coode, then, whom Nicholson was wont to call "a diminutive Ferguson
in point of Government; a Hobbist in point of Religion": already in
November of 1694, while Ebenezer was ill and languishing at Maiden, the
Governor had demanded an account of Coode's disbursement of public
revenue and had charged him with, among other misdemeanors, accepting
an illegal award of four thousand pounds of tobacco from the Lower House
for his services to the Rebellion, stealing the records of his criminal courts
for 1691, embezzling public funds in the amount of five hundred thirty-
two pounds two shillings and ninepence as chief of the Protestant
Associators (not to mention four hundred more as Receiver General for the
Potomac and yet another seven hundred in bills of exchange as Collector
for Wicomico River), impersonating a Papist priest and an Anglican rector,
conspiring against Governor and King alike, and blaspheming against the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In July of 1696, on the strength of
his new evidence, Nicholson instituted proceedings against him and took
depositions from divers officials and citizens on the several charges, where-
upon his quarry fled to the protection of Andros in Virginia. From there (so
went the rumors, for few people claimed ever to have seen him with their
own eyes) he communicated secretly with his agents, particularly Gerrard
Slye and Sam Scurry—the former of whom he prompted to publish "Articles
of Charge" against Nicholson to the Lords Justices in London, accusing the
Governor of everything from Papism and unnatural practices to the murder
of one Henry Denton, Clerk of the Council and "material witness to his
misdeeds." Despite his problems with privateers in the Bay, Frenchmen on
the border, Indians all about the Province, and various murrains and
endemics, Nicholson contrived during this period to found a college in
Anne Arundel Town (whose name had become Annapolis), defend himself

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 8oi ]

against Slye's charges, and finally, in the summer of 1698, order two sloops
and a hundred men to capture Coode and Slye on the Potomac River. The
lesser man was apprehended and brought to justice, whereupon he
immediately pled coercion by his superior; but Coode himself eluded the
trap.

One is pained to learn that at this point matters were removed from the
doughty Governor's hands. In an action calculated to solve a number of
problems at once, His Majesty commissioned Nicholson to replace his old
rival, Sir Edmund Andros, in Virginia, who, having fallen out of royal favor
by his attacks on Dr. Blair of William and Mary's College, was demoted to
a minor governorship in the West Indies. In January of 1699 (1698 by the
old calendar) the transfer was effected, and almost at once Coode was
reported to have returned triumphantly to St. Mary's County. Some said
he misjudged Nathaniel Blackiston, Nicholson's successor and a nephew of
Coode's own brother-in-law, inasmuch as Blackiston actually arrested him
in May of the same year; others maintained that such naivet6 was unthink-
able in so shrewd an intriguer. It was simple collusion, they claimed, and
their cynicism seems justified when one learns that in July of the following
year Coode was pardoned and released at his own request, and by 1708 was
actually licensed to practice law in the St. Mary's County Court! But an-
other view, less cynical and more subtle, was advanced by Ebenezer Cooke
to his sister at the time: no trace had ever been found or mention made
of Captain Scurry, he pointed out, since early in the trial of Captain Slye.
Was it not entirely within the scope of possibility that the man arrested
and pardoned under Coode's name was this same Scurry, either in collusion
with Blackiston or otherwise? Ebenezer thought it was, and thus returned
to the more basic question: did the "real" John Coode exist at all inde-
pendently of his several impersonators, or was he merely a fiction created
by his supposed collaborators for the purpose of shedding their responsi-
bilities, just as businessmen incorporate limited-liability companies to
answer for their adventures?

In any case, one knows that John Coode never attained the grand ob-
jectives attributed to him, and neither did that shadowy figure presumed
to be at the other pole of morality, Lord Baltimore— at least not in his
lifetime. For however ambiguous Charles Calvert's means and motives, if
he existed at all (and if Burlingame did not entirely misrepresent him) one
assumes at least that he was anxious to recover his family's proprietary rights
to Maryland. This much granted, he must have died in 1715 a doubly
disappointed man, for not only was Maryland under the rule of her sixth

[ 802 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

Royal Governor, but his son and heir, Benedict Leonard Calvert, had two
years previously renounced Catholicism in favor of the Church of England,
at the expense of his annual allowance of four hundred fifty pounds. It was
this very defection, however, that set in progress a swift and dramatic change
in the family fortunes: Charles Calvert died on the twentieth of February,
and the outcast Benedict Leonard became the fourth Lord Baltimore; but
less than two months later, on April 5, Benedict himself passed on, and the
title was inherited by his sixteen-year-old son, also named Charles. Now this
fifth Lord Baltimore was not only a Protestant like his father, but a hand-
some, dissolute courtier to boot, so well respected in the royal house for his
abilities at pimping and intrigue that in time he became Gentleman of the
Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales. With this formidable array of qualifi-
cations in his favor, it took him exactly one month to do what his grand-
father had not managed in twenty-five years: in May of 1715, His Majesty
George I restored to him the charter of Maryland, its almost monarchic
original privileges intact.

These marvels alone, it seems to the Author, are sufficient evidence to
convict Mistress Clio on the charge of shamelessness once lodged against
her by our poet; what then is one to think on seeing this same young
Baltimore, in 1728, offer to Ebenezer Cooke a bona fide commission as
Poet and Laureate of Maryland? "On to Hecuba!" as our poet was wont
to cry. Or, after the manner of his hybrid metaphors: let us plumb this muse's
farce to its final sorry deep and ring the curtain!

First, the Reader must know that after the burst of inspiration which drove
him, during his convalescence at Maiden in the winter- of 1694, to compose
not the promised Marylandiad but a Hudibrastic expos£ of the ills that
had befallen him, Ebenezer wrote no further verse for thirty-four years.
Whether this fallowness was owing to the loss of his virginity, dissatisfaction
with his talents, absence of inspiration, alteration of his personality, or some
more subtle cause, it would be idle presumption to say— the springs of art
are deep beyond the ken of those who drink there—but Ebenezer was as
astonished as will be the Reader to find that precisely during these decades
his fame as a poet increased yearly! The manuscript of his attack on Mary-
land, one remembers, Ebenezer had taken with him on his shameful flight
from Maiden and entrusted, via Burlingame, to the captain of the bark
Pilgrim, which the two friends left at St. Mary's City. At the time, Ebenezer
had been apprehensive over its safety and had exacted assurances from Bur-
lingame that the captain would deliver it to a London printer; but in the
rush of events thereafter, he forgot the poem entirely, and when, after the

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 803 ]

christening of Andrew III, Life eased its hold upon his throat, he only
wondered disinterestedly whatever became of it.

His slight curiosity was gratified in 1709, when his father sent him a copy
of The Sot-Weed Factor under the imprint of Benjamin Bragg, at the Sign
of the Raven in Paternoster Row! The Pilgrim's captain, Andrew explained
in an accompanying letter, had delivered the manuscript to some other
printer, who, seeing no profit in its publication, had passed it about as a
curiosity. In time it had fallen into the hands of Messrs. Oliver, Trent, and
Merriwcather, Ebenezer's erstwhile companions, who, upon recognizing it
as the work of their friend, created such a stir of interest that the printer
decided to risk publishing it. At this point, however, Benjamin Bragg got
wind of the matter and asserted a prior right to the poem, on the ground
that its author was still in his debt for the very paper on which it was
penned. There ensued an exchange of mild threats— for printers and sellers
of books are a gutless lot, even in matters directly affecting their interests— at
the end of which Bragg intimidated his rival into relinquishing the manu-
script and brought out an edition of it at 6d. the copy. The first result, An-
drew declared, was a vehement denial from the third Lord Baltimore that he
had in any way commissioned Ebenezer Cooke— a perfect stranger to him—
as Laureate of Maryland or anything else, and a repudiation of the entire
contents of the poem. There were even rumors of a libel suit against the
poet, to be brought by the Lord Proprietary at such time as the King saw fit
to restore him his province; in time, however, the rumors had ceased, for
some favorable notices of the poem began to appear that same year. Andrew
included one in his letter: "A refreshing change from the usual false
panegyrics upon the Plantations . . ." it read in part. ". . . admirable
Hudibrastics . . . pointed wit ... Lord Calvert's loss is Poesy's gain . . "

"What a feather in thy cap!*' Anna cheered upon reading it. "Nay, i'faith,
'tis a very plume, Eben!"

But her brother, surprised as he was to learn of his sudden notoriety, was
unimpressed. In fact, he seemed more annoyed than pleased by the review.

*4tITie shallow fop!" he exclaimed. "He nowhere grants the poem's truth!
'Twas not to wax my name I wrote it, but to wane Maryland's!"

Nevertheless, in the years that followed, The Sot-Weed Factor enjoyed
a steady popularity among literate Londoners— though not at all of the sort
its author wished for it. Critics spoke of it as a fine example of the satiric
extravaganza currently in vogue; they praised its rhymes and wit; they ap-
plauded the characterizations and the farcical action— and not one of them
took the poem seriouslyl Indeed, one writer,, commenting on Lord Balti-
more's wrathy observed:

[804] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

It is a curious thing that Baltimore, so anxious to persuade us of the elegance
of his former Palatinate, should so hardly use that Palatinate's first Poet, -when
the very poem he despises is our initial proof of Maryland's refinement. In sooth,
it is no mean Plantation that hath given birth to such delicious wit as Mister
Cooke's . . .

Such accolades chagrined and wisened the poet, who accepted not a word
of them. In 1711, when old Andrew died and Ebenezer was obliged to sail
to London for the purpose of probating his father's will, he permitted him-
self to be wined and dined by Bragg and Ben Oliver, who had become his
partner in the printing-house (Tom Trent, they informed him, had re-
nounced poetry and the Established Church to become a Jesuit; Dick
Merriweather, after wooing Death in a hundred unpublished odes and
sonnets, had made such a conquest of that Dark Lady that at length, his
horse rearing unexpectedly and throwing him to the cobbles, she had
turned into an eternal embrace what he had meant as a mere flirtation),
but to their entreaties for a sequel to the poem— <z Fur-and-Hide Factor or
a Sot-Weed Factor's Revenge— he turned a deaf ear.

Truth to tell, he had little to say any more in verse. From time to time
a couplet would occur to him as he worked about his estate, but the
tumultuous days and tranquil years behind him had either blunted his
poetic gift or sharpened his critical faculties: The Sot-Weed Factor itself
he came to see as an artless work, full of clumsy spleen, obscure allusions,
and ponderous or merely foppish levities; and none of his later conceptions
struck him as worthy of the pen. In 1717, deciding that whatever obli-
gation he owed to his father was amply satisfied* he sold his moiety of
Cooke's Point to one Edward Cooke— that same poor cuckold whose
identity Ebenezer had once assumed to escape Captain Mitchell— and Anna
hers to Major Henry Trippe of the Dorset militia; though "their" son
Andrew III was by this time a man of twenty-one and had already sustained
whatever wounds the scandal of his birth was likely to inflict, they moved
first to Kent and later to Prince George's County. For income, Ebenezer—-
now in his early fifties— performed various clerical odd-jobs as deputy to
Henry and Bennett Lowe, Receivers General of the Province, with whom
he became associated (the Author regrets to say) by reason of his conviction
that their brother Nicholas was actually Henry Burlingame, Anna, be it said,
did not permit herself to share this delusion, though she indulged it in her
brother; but Ebenezer grew more fixed in it every day. If, indeed, it was
a delusion: Nicholas Lowe did not in the least resemble Burlingame's past
impersonation of him or any other of the former tutor's disguises, but he

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR [ 805 ]

was of the proper age and height, possessed a curious wit and broad educa-
tion, and even displayed what can only be called "cosmophilist" tendencies
now and again. Furthermore, to all of Ebenezer's subtle hints and veiled
inquiries he replied with a mischievous smile or even a shrug . . . But no!
Like Anna, we shall resist the temptation to folie d. deux: age has made our
hero fond, like many another, and there's an end on itl

Two things occurred in 1728 to conclude our history. Old Charles Calvert
was then a baker's dozen years under the sod and thus unable to savor, as
did our poet in his sixty-second year, this final irony concerning The Sot-
Weed Factor: that its net effect was precisely what Baltimore had hoped to
gain from a Marylandiad, and precisely the reverse of its author's intention.
Maryland, in part because of the well-known poem, acquired in the early
eighteenth century a reputation for graciousness and refinement comparable
to Virginia's, and a number of excellent families were induced to settle
there. In recognition of this fact, the fifth Lord Baltimore (that famous
young rake and dilettante referred to earlier) was moved to write a letter
to the aging poet, from which the following excerpt will suffice:

My Grandfather & namesake, for dl his unquestioned Virtues, -was no familiar
of the Arts, and thwarted in his original purpose in calling you Laureat (Vo7i be it
said We are confident he did, notwithstanding his later denials thereof), he was
unable to perceive the value of your gift to Maryland. We do hence mark it fit,
that now, w/i*n a generation hath attested the merits of your work, you shd accept
in fact, albeit belatedly, that office & title the qualifications whereto you have so
long since fulfilled. Namely, Poet & Laureat of the Province of Maryland . . .

Ebenezer merely smiled at the invitation and shook his head at his sister's
suggestion that he accept it.

"Nay, Anna, 'tis a poor climate for a poet, is Maryland's, nor is my talent
hardy enough to live in't. Let Baltimore give his title to one whose pen
deserves it; as for me, methinks I'll to the muse no morel"

But that same year saw the death of Nicholas Lowe, which so touched the
poet (owing to his delusion) that he broke his vow and his long silence to
publish, in the Maryland Gazette, an Elegy on the Death of the Hon.
Nicholas Low> Esq., containing sundiy allusions to his ambivalent feelings
towards that gentleman. Thereafter, either because he felt a ripening of his
talents or merely because breaking one's vow, like losing one's innocence, is
an irreparable affair which one had as well make the best of (the Reader will
have to judge which), he was not sparing of his pen: in 1730 he brought
out the long-awaited sequel, Sot-Weed Redivivus, or The Planter's Looking-
Glass, which, alas, had not the success of its original; the following year he

t 806 ] THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

published another satirical narrative, this one dealing with Bacon's Rebel-
lion in Virginia, and a revised (and emasculated) edition of The Sot-Weed
Factor. In the spring of 1732, at the age of sixty-six, he succumbed to a
sort of quinsy, and his beloved sister (who was to follow him not long after),
in setting his affairs in order, discovered among his papers a charming
epitaph, which, though undated, the Author presumes to be his final work,
and appends for the benefit of interested scholars:

Here moulds a posing, foppish Actor,
Author of THE SOT-WEED FACTOR,
Falsely prais'd. Take Heed, "who sees this
Epitaph; look thee to Jesus!
Labour not for Earthly Glory:
Fame's a fickle Slut, and w/iory.
From thy Fancy's chast Couch drive her:
He's a Fool -who'll strive to swive her!

E.G., G™\ P & L* of M*

Regrettably, his heirs saw fit not to immortalize their sire with this de-
lightful inscription, but instead had his headstone graved with the usual
piffle. However, either his warning got about or else his complaint that
Maryland's air— in any case, Dorchester's— ill supports the delicate muse
was accurate, for to the best of the Author's knowledge her marshes have
spawned no other poet since Ebenezer Cooke, Gentleman, Poet and Laure-
ate of the Province.